By Theodore N. Beitchman
It has been a week since Howie Boy Roseman was stripped of his general managership of the Eagles and demoted with a pay raise.
And there has been much speculation about why it happened and how it happened and what Supreme Leader Chip Kelly’s new power will mean to the Eagles.
But no one has done a more thorough job of excavating the wreckage of Roseman’s career — BTW, his lifetime ambition was to be an NFL GM!!! — than the Inquirer’s Zach Berman, whose thumb-sucker appears in today’s paper.
Inside all the explanation is a quote that is devastating about Howie Boy. And since none of the main characters in the Eagles’ psychodrama have spoken, this will have to do:
“The attributes that allowed him to be successful . . . and allowed him to rise quickly through the organization really hurt him when he got to the top,” a former team employee said. “Howie is motivated by fear. . . . He’s afraid of missing on scouts, he’s afraid of missing on players, he’s afraid of missing on coaches. He wants the best. Unfortunately, it leaves him and everyone else around him in a state of perpetual unrest.”
Fear is a powerful incentive. It is used in politics by low-forehead candidates who make you afraid of something and then tell you whom to blame. But it is also a real impediment, especially when you have been elevated above your level of competence.
Call it the Howie Boy Principle.
