Dick Vermeil gets Chip Kelly

LEAVE IT to Dick Vermeil to distill what Chip Kelly is doing.

"It's not so much innovation," Vermeil said. "It's evolution."

Vermeil, even at 79, has the sort of beautiful mind that synthesizes disparate concepts and makes sense where others see chaos.

That mind took a moribund Eagles franchise and turned it into a Super Bowl team.

That mind unretired, helped develop the Rams' "gimmick" offense and brought the Lombardi Trophy to a baseball town.

That mind landed Vermeil in the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame on Thursday. He was among 15 inductees of the Hall's 12th class, which included St. Joe's Prep and Delaware product Rich Gannon and Eagles all-purpose back Timmy Brown - a pair of versatile, high-IQ players Eagles coach Chip Kelly would have loved.

"I wanted to be on the other side of Tommy MacDonald, as a receiver!" said Brown, who averaged 1,157 all-purpose yards and nine touchdowns from 1962-66. "I would love to touch the ball in the offense they're running now."

"I think it'd be a great offense to play in," said Gannon, a mobile, accurate passer with the Raiders.

Jon Gruden resurrected Gannon's career and called Gannon the smartest quarterback he'd ever worked with. From 1999-2002 Gannon compiled a 93.2 passer rating, went to four Pro Bowls, won the 2002 MVP award at the record age of 37 and led the Raiders to Super Bowl XXXVII (a year after Gruden left).

At the same time, Vermeil was overseeing The Greatest Show on Turf; once, itself, considered a gimmick scheme that could not win.

Along with coordinator Mike Martz, he used offensive concepts from Sid Gillman, his quarterbacks coach in Philadelphia, Don Coryell, Al Saunders and Jim Hanifan. In St. Louis, Vermeil molded Arena League quarterback Kurt Warner into an NFL MVP, stole Marshall Faulk from the Colts and anchored the line with Orlando Pace.

That team won Super Bowl XXXIV.

The Greatest Show on Turf's concepts were born in Philadelphia.

"The offense we ran in St. Louis was the same offense we started with here in Philadelphia," Vermeil said. "It kept growing."

Can the "Machine Gun" Kelly offense evolve further?

"There's no question in my mind it can work, if you have the right players and the right assistant coaches," Vermeil said. "They'll keep adjusting the offense to what he wants to do as he gets more accustomed to the NFL. Just like I did."

That nod to Kelly's blind spot should not go overlooked. There is a learning curve for anyone who enters a new discipline.

A violin is a violin, but sawing a fiddle in a honky tonk isn't sitting first chair with the New York Philharmonic.

Then again, a musician is only as good as his instrument. Kelly took charge of the front office in January and revamped the roster; the most significant change was trading quarterback Nick Foles to the Rams for Sam Bradford.

"That's building a championship in the eyes of the leadership," Vermeil said.

There's plenty of building left to do.

Bradford's 79.5 rating is fourth-worst among passers with 100 completions. The Eagles are 4-4 and the up-tempo scheme, already mimicked by some, has come under criticism.

It is sound, Gannon said.

"He can sustain it," Gannon said. "But to be productive, you have to be consistent at the quarterback position. In fairness to Sam, he didn't play the last two years (due to injury). He's playing faster. The biggest thing is ball security. Third down's a problem right now, and also the red zone. Situational football - he's going to get better in those areas as he gets more comfortable in the system."

Does that mean Kelly can do what Vermeil did?

"No question. If I can do it, anybody could," Vermeil said. "I respect very much what he and his staff are doing."

On a night set aside to honor the past, Kelly and his lieutenants were the hot topic.

Phillies great Garry Maddox was inducted, too, along with Flyers star Rick MacLeish. Cindy Timchal and Karen Shelton, colossal lacrosse and field hockey college coaches, respectively, have won a lot more than Kelly or Vermeil ever did. Flyers public-address announcer Lou Nolan even took a night off, his 10th in 43 years.

The star power at the Sheraton Society Hill was blinding. Every honoree radiated greatness.

But Philly's a football town, and no one is more beloved than Dick Vermeil - a Napa-born vintner who had more losing seasons with the Eagles than with the Rams or Chiefs.

How does this sort of affection grow to this size?

"Maybe it's because people here appreciate hard work. Maybe it's because they appreciated what we accomplished in comparison to what had been going on," said Vermeil, whose predecessors conspired to avoid the playoffs for 15 years. "And they related to me because I told them the truth. I didn't hide anything from them. I'm an easy person to read."

"We'd had a lot of bad football here," said Bill Bergey, a 2011 inductee and a Pro Bowl linebacker Vermeil inherited . . . and treated like any college freshman. "This little, hairy high school coach who started out at Hillsdale High was telling me to keep my chin strap buckled. He told me when I could take a drink of water. He told me when I could take a knee. He did things differently. But we knew:

"Anybody who bought into the way he wanted to do things would become winners."

Sound familiar?

Email: hayesm@phillynews.com