What Eagles Fans Can Learn from Chip Kelly's Quarterback Selection Process

Eventually, Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly's trade for quarterback Sam Bradford is going to play out on the field, and we're going to have to stop talking about it as a process. However, the process that led to the trade is fascinating, and thanks to a post on Birds 24/7, we were treated to a little bit more of it. 

"

“We looked at everything, and we knew we weren’t going to pick No. 1 or No. 2. So, and I’ve said it before, if you’re not going to pick one or two, how do you go get a quarterback?" said Kelly, explaining the thought process heading into this offseason. "Peyton Manning switched teams because of an injury. Drew Brees switched teams because of an injury. So we went down that path.”

"

I could write a 10-page thesis on the process involved in every step of these four sentences. But I hope you'll settle for some general ruminations on what that paragraph reveals to us about Kelly. 

Bet On Injury-Prone Players

The stat thrown out most frequently with Bradford—as my colleague Brad Gagnon notes—is that Bradford has missed more starts (25) over a two-year period than any quarterback near his age range. 

We've already seen evidence that Kelly's much-discussed sports science approach has benefited the Eagles on the field, as they've had the fewest injuries as measured by Football Outsiders' adjusted games lost metric over the last two years. 

But let's take that process to its logical conclusion: If the Eagles believe they can keep Bradford healthy, and we believe they are the best fit for keeping Bradford healthy, then how much of a risk on health are they actually taking? 

What this really comes down to is a discussion of the term "injury-prone" that often never sees the light of day in traditional NFL media. Fed by the tough-guy culture employed by most NFL coaches who are trying to find something reliable, durability is a valued commodity.

But a lot of it comes down to availability bias—that is, we only know what we most recently remember. A player tears an ACL after five healthy seasons, and all of the sudden he is no longer "reliable."

Jene Bramel of Footballguys discussed the issue.

"It's probably as simple as recognizing that every team will have its own philosophy of risk tolerance. In the same way some teams may be more aggressive on fourth down, some teams may be more willing to accept certain types of injury risk," he said.

That's not to say that the Eagles should sign someone legally blind and teach him to play football—though that made for a good Strangers With Candy episode—but the actual risk of these injuries is often overstated.

That the Eagles are focusing on prevention and appear to be pretty good at it, and it seems to have given them a boost in player acquisition because they actually believe they can save the careers of some unhealthy players.

It also allows them to take a shot on a player who has been considered injury-prone since college.

Abhor the Quarterback Treadmill

If you look at the recent history of non-top-two quarterback selections in the NFL draft, you'll find a lot of quarterbacks that didn't pan out, and a few that did when talent evaluators believed a little too much that something would hold them back in the NFL. For instance, Russell Wilson's height, or Teddy Bridgewater's pro day.

Consider that over the last 10 years (not including 2015), there were 140 quarterbacks drafted. Consider that of the eight quarterbacks drafted No. 1 or No. 2 overall, the names JaMarcus Russell and Alex Smith appear.

Quarterback evaluation has not been refined well at the NFL level. Certain players come up—like Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck—and it's hard to even imagine not picking them first overall. But outside of those few, the process is shaky and riddled with mistakes. It creates an enormous cottage industry for football writers, because they're all easily nitpicked. 

For an NFL team, picking a quarterback is often a riskier move than it should be. Tying your future to a quarterback who may fail or succeed is harder than it should be when he's picked in the first round, and we expect these quarterbacks to become future stars or else it means something went wrong with the coaching. 

Of course, the simpler reason for Kelly to commit to a Bradford trade was that there was no depth in the 2015 quarterback class. But Kelly could have taken the safer move by keeping his draft picks and rolling out Nick Foles again. 

That he didn't speaks to how he felt about the quarterback position: If you aren't trying to find a solution, you're going nowhere. Foles was never going to be that guy, and Matt Barkley has shown us he may not be ready to be anyone's solution. That set up this roll of the dice on Bradford.

The Context of a Player's Results

When Bradford came out in 2010, he was considered a surefire No. 1 pick even after missing most of his redshirt sophomore season with a shoulder surgery. 

Bradford failed miserably in St. Louis from a statistical standpoint when he was healthy enough to get on the field. But he did fail under Steve Spagnuolo and Jeff Fisher, a pair of defense-first coaches with a history of meddling a bit too much on the offensive side of the ball. Bradford was never given a true No. 1 target. He played, for most of this time, behind an inept offensive line.

And if you look at the criticism he faced coming out of the NFL draft, you see a lot of talk about the spread offense. The Eagles are clearly high on both their predraft and current evaluations of Bradford's talent being more than the results, perhaps because they believe he'll thrive in Kelly's system.

The most fascinating thing to me about this process is that even as I understand it more via research and Kelly's public proclamations, I still think the trade itself was borderline inexcusable. There's just no way I'd value Bradford that highly after what I'd call four lost NFL seasons. 

But you can understand the things that Kelly has looked for in hoping to create a franchise quarterback. You can understand why he gambled by looking at the recent past of first-round quarterbacks. He isn't tied to Bradford should his failures continue. 

And in a supply-limited market, you can understand why he had to reach a little higher on the draft-pick spectrum than most would. 

Rivers McCown is an NFL analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the podcast The Three-Cone Drill. His work has also appeared on Football Outsiders and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter at @riversmccown.