Brandon Boykin Says That Chip Kelly "Isn't Comfortable Around Grown Men Of Our Culture"

Chip goes neutral, starts practice with RICO #TeamMeek #Eagles

— Eliot Shorr-Parks (@EliotShorrParks) August 2, 2015

Back 2 Back is on! #ChipTeamDrake?

— Eliot Shorr-Parks (@EliotShorrParks) August 2, 2015

LBS- While Boykin didn’t come right out and accuse Kelly of being racist, he did tell Derrick Gunn of Comcast SportsNet that Kelly is “uncomfortable around grown men of our culture.” Boykin elaborated in a text message.

“He can’t relate and that makes him uncomfortable,” Boykin wrote. “He likes total control of everything, and he don’t like to be uncomfortable. Players excel when you let them naturally be who they are, and in my experience that hasn’t been important to him, but you guys have heard this before me.”

Boykin later insisted that he was not implying that Kelly is racist.

“I’m not saying he’s a racist at all,” he said, per Judy Battista of NFL.com. “When you are a player, you want to be able to relate to your coach outside of football. There were times, he just wouldn’t talk to people. You would walk down the hallway, he wouldn’t say anything to you.”

It seems fairly obvious that Boykin saying reporters have “heard this before me” was in reference to McCoy saying Kelly is on a mission to get rid of all the good black players on the Eagles roster. In McCoy’s case, we only need to look at these comments from Kelly in 2008 to understand why the running back was shipped out of town.


You know, it's funny. You just don't completely erase the stigma that comes along with being labeled as a racist by one scorned player that was shipped out of town on terms other than his own. Now a days you just throw the narrative out there and alter the facts to fit the story later. Think about what is being said here. An older white man doesn't know how to relate to a bunch of young, black men. If that was said before Shady McCoy called Chip Kelly's personnel decisions racially motivated it's just an obvious, factual statement. You say it after and all the sudden it's exacerbating a more than likely false accusation. So weird how it's always the black players that no longer play for Chip Kelly that criticize him of having an ulterior motive. I guess that just makes all the black players still currently on the team a bunch of Uncle Tom's, right?

Chip Kelly is a coach that certainly has a bunch of innovative, if not crazy, methods. Whether or not he is a genius or a moron is still up for debate. However, I highly doubt his inability to relate to black culture influences any of his football decisions. Who the hell cares if he knows anything about hip hop, or what slang terms are hot in the streets, or what the new fashion is? Those are all irrelevant to him successfully doing his job. Would it be nice if he were able to better communicate with his players away from the football field? Sure, but not all authority figures are personable. That remains true in all professions, not just one that happens to employ a large quantity of African Americans. 

Shame on Brandon Boykin. I know he didn't say Chip Kelly was racist, but when the thought it already out there you have to assume that any statement that references an inability to understand black culture is going to be misunderstood. You put Chip Kelly and race in the same sentence and you end up with Stephen A. Smith and the gang on 'First Take' trying to recreate the civil rights movement. That's the media-centric society we live in now. You can no longer say that white football coaches and black football players don't have much in common besides football without implying that there is a much more serious issue at hand. Chip Kelly may not be in touch with the urban community, but you can't say he's not at least giving it the old college try...

The entire team just yelled "Is that a world tour or your girls tour" haha #Eagles

— Eliot Shorr-Parks (@EliotShorrParks) August 2, 2015