Eagles' Duce Staley rebuffs racial criticisms about Chip Kelly

IF YOU READ only about the Trojan Horse, you might be entertained, but you would not get the full tale of the Trojan War.

Both are great stories.

So yesterday, Eagles running backs coach Duce Staley knew one of the topics coming at him would be about former Eagles running back LeSean McCoy and the firestorm he caused by implying head coach Chip Kelly got rid of him because he got rid of "all the good black players."

Not only had Staley, a former Eagles running back, worked closely with McCoy for the last two seasons, but he also is in the position of being the only African-American lead assistant coach on Kelly's staff.

Staley utilized some reverse storytelling logic on the assembled media.

"We're all here to do a job, and that is to coach football," said Staley, a running back for the Birds from 1997 to 2003, "so don't take something that is a chapter and make it a book. If you understand what I'm saying."

In 2015, this shouldn't be a conversation Staley needed to have about the National Football League.

Kelly had his reasons for trading McCoy to the Buffalo Bills for linebacker Kiko Alonso, and some might not have been related to production on the field. It might well have been about personality and fitting into a certain football culture, but it was not about McCoy's race.

The head coach, against whom the veiled accusations were levied, spoke on the matter last week.

Yesterday, up near Canada during the Bills' OTAs, McCoy snapped at reporters for asking him to clarify his comments about Kelly.

"For what?" McCoy said during a testy exchange. "I don't got to explain myself to nobody. I said what I said, how I felt at the time, and I'm done with that."

Still, even though Staley had nothing to do with any of it, it fell to him as the resident black coach to offer more presumed insight.

Noting that Staley had a black position coach - Ted Williams - when he played, one reporter asked him what it meant for black players to have a black coach.

"It means you've got a black position coach and you're a black player," Staley said.

The reporter persisted with the talking point, asking Staley whether being a black coach made it easier for Williams to understand or know where black players were coming from.

"We all speak English," Staley said.

"What's that?" the reporter asked.

"We all speak English," Staley repeated.

"Yeah," the reporter responded, as the interview session shifted from sociology and back to football.

Staley, who got promoted from special-teams quality control coach to running backs coach in 2013 when Kelly was hired, wasn't being evasive, but he didn't like the assumption that his being black automatically meant he has some instinctual knowledge of why another black person did what he did.

Still, he said he understood why he was asked the questions.

"You guys got a job," he said. "I've got a job, too. It's your job to find out what's going on. It's my job to tell you as much I know.

"What I can talk about is [the current Eagles running backs] on what they are doing on the field. Everything else, you've got to go ask somebody else about it, because I have no idea.

"Chip is not a racist at all. I know, from my relationship with Chip, that's definitely far-fetched."

As far as what Staley said he could talk about, he said he is excited about his running backs or rather as excited as he can be about observing them working out in shorts and T-shirts in limited, non-contact football drills.

Staley said free-agent signings DeMarco Murray, who led the NFL in rushing last season with Dallas, and Ryan Matthews complement returnee Darren Sproles. He also said rookie free agent Raheem Mostert, out of Purdue University, is a player to watch during training camp.

The most obvious football-related question for Staley was how Murray fit as McCoy's replacement.

"[Murray] is a perfect fit for us, exactly what we want to do, full steam ahead, of course, downhill," he said. "That's what we're preaching every day - 1, 2, 3, 4 yards and a cloud of dust."

Staley said McCoy could also do that, but he would not step into the trap of saying how the Eagles might be stronger or weaker in swapping in Murray for McCoy.

"Both of these guys are in the peak of their careers, in my opinion," Staley said. "Both have been successful and led the league in rushing.

"I don't want to be redundant about this, but don't take something that was a chapter and make it a book. [McCoy] is gone. He's not a part of the Philadelphia Eagles anymore. I've moved on. I've got a good stable of backs, and those are the guys I am coaching."

Columns: ph.ly/Smallwood