I had some ideas on what might happen in free agency. I wasn’t anywhere close to reality. Chip Kelly made moves that I would have never come up with.

Because of that, I’m as excited for this draft as any I can remember. I wrote about that for PE.com.

There were times when Andy Reid would throw me a curve ball, but I generally knew what he was doing. Same with Howie Roseman. I don’t mean that I could predict every pick, but I had a good feel for the players they would like and when they might go after them.

I have some very basic ideas with Chip, but I also realize he could do shocking things in the draft. He could trade up, he could trade down. He could make surprising choices. The actual draft board was mostly put together by Ed Marynowitz and the scouting department so this isn’t as if Chip Kelly is going to take a long snapper in the 2nd round and then spend a 3rd round pick on a kid from Oregon that the rest of the league sees as a UDFA.

The scouts are looking for Chip Kelly’s type of players so there won’t be a lot of 5-9 CBs or 230-pound Safeties in the mix. But the scouts are grading players in a conventional way. They started this process last spring. Howie was the GM and ran the scouting department. Chip took over in January. I’m sure he communicated to the scouts what he was looking for, but he couldn’t completely overhaul how they graded players in a matter of days. I don’t know if Kelly even wants to do that. He’s just very specific with what he is looking for.

With Kelly running the show, the draft is wide open. Just about anything can happen. It will almost be disappointing if the teams stays put at every pick and makes seemingly normal selections. After the flurry of pro personnel moves, I think we all expect at least one pick where we say “What is Chip thinking?”.

Less than a month away.

Are you starting to get excited.

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If the Eagles miss out out on CBs Trae Waynes and Kevin Johnson, and they don’t like Marcus Peters (possible character issues), I hope they go for Eric Rowe over Byron Jones. I love Jones athletic ability, but Rowe is smarter and more instinctive as a player. I value that in DBs.

The more I watch of Rowe, the more he grows on me. He’s not an elite corner or special player, but there is a lot to like about him.

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Someone in the comments section found this snippet on Nick Saban.

What makes Saban such a fantastic coach is that he recruits players who fit his system. One example that I read in The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football, is that Saban follows what he called “the blueprint” for success. According to the book, Andy Staples in Sports Illustrated, stated that the “blueprint targeted high school athletes who fit certain character/attitude/intelligence criteria and position-specific height/weight/speed guidelines tailored to Alabama’s offensive and defensive schemes. Cornerbacks, for example, should ideally be between six feet and six feet two inches and about 190 pounds and run a sub-4.5 forty-yard dash; linemen should stand no less than six feet two because as ( Kirby) Smart (defensive coordinator) drily noted, ‘big people beat up little people.’”

They state that they might not be interested in guys who might be five-star players as seen by recruiting websites, if they don’t fit their parameters at Alabama. Smart states, “Sure there are exceptions to the rule, but we don’t want a team full of exceptions.”

Sounds very familiar, huh?

Just interesting to hear how much coaches can think alike, despite being very different.

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