When I was hiring staff, I wanted to hire a lot of smart people. Then let’s sit together as a group and say, ‘Alright, what did you do in the quick game? How do we want to do it in the quick game? This is what we did here. How did you call it in Cleveland, (offensive coordinator) Pat (Shurmur and defensive coordinator) Bill (Davis)?’ (Wide receivers coach) Bobby (Bicknell), came from the Buffalo Bills: ‘How did you do it?’ How did (offensive line coach) Jeff Stoutland do it in Alabama? And then we came up with what is the best way for the 2013 Eagles to run it. And we did it in every phase: the screen game, the quick game, the drop back game, the run game, all those things. What’s our two minute offense going to look like? It’s a collaboration from everybody we put together on our staff. And everybody has a say, and we’ll all talk it through, and then we’ll, as a group, decide on what is the best thing moving forward.
That’s from Chip Kelly’s most recent interview post practice. Most so-called innovations are the result of a bunch of guys sitting in a room trying to figure out if what they are doing makes sense. Do it enough — and thoughtfully enough — and focus on what your players can do and how it all fits together, and the wrinkles and interesting stuff will take care of themselves.