Stephen A. Smith never directly called Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly a racist - he simply insinuated as much when he said earlier this offseason that Kelly's offseason moves had left "a few brothers feeling uncomfortable."
Take from that what you will, but it seems a fairly clear indication that Smith either believes or was attempting to raise the specter of the possibility that Kelly carries some type of bias based on skin color.
It was a situation made worse shortly thereafter by comments from former Eagles offensive lineman and short-term coaching intern Tra Thomas that he felt a "hint of racism" while operating under Kelly and then exacerbated when recently jettisoned running back LeSean McCoy suggested that Kelly had gotten rid of all the "good black players."
Combined with Kelly and the Eagles decision to keep wide receiver Riley Cooper around despite the emergence of a videotape which shows Cooper spewing a racial epithet while at a Kenny Chesney concert in 2013, it all made for an unfortunate and unnecessary scenario that Kelly was forced to address at his offseason opening press conference at Philly's OTA's on Thursday.
"We weigh a lot of factors when we evaluate players, but color is not one of them," Kelly said, per Mark Eckel of NJ.com.
Smith, who seemed to be something of a matrix for the whole ordeal, defended his original comments Friday.
"Since I'm the one that is considered to be the individual who instigated all of this, let me be very clear about where I stand," Smith said on ESPN's First Take, via Eliot Shorr-Parks of NJ.com. "I have met Chip Kelly one time. I have never once called him a racist. It would be irresponsible for me or anyone else who has not dealt with him to call him such a thing. And that is as simple as that."
Smith also maintained that despite the fact that he did not call Kelly a racist, he was hearing from players in the Eagles locker room at the time pertaining to issues with Kelly's personnel decisions.
"Chip Kelly coaches in the NFL. Chip Kelly is supposed to be about winning football games. At the end of the day, DeSean Jackson is gone, LeSean McCoy is gone, Jeremy Maclin is gone, but Riley Cooper is still on your squad. I simply sat back and said, 'I have spoken to numerous players within the Eagles organization and they simply said to me, 'Something is wrong with that picture. I don't know what it is, but something is wrong with that, Stephen A.' At no time did anybody call him a racist. At no time did anybody sit there and say, 'You know what, he doesn't like black people.' At no time did anyone point out, as Mike Golic did on (Mike and Mike), that in the last year of the Andy Reid era, 68% of the players on the Eagles were black, whereas with Chip Kelly, 51% are black. I'm not even going there. It has nothing to do with numbers. I'm quite sure there are a lot of black players on the Eagles squad. I'm quite sure Chip Kelly doesn't look at a player and say, 'He's black, I don't want him.' It's ridiculous. Nobody is saying that."
Smith also pointed to Cooper's issue as the impetus for his remarks.
"What they are saying is, 'We all know what Riley Cooper did. We all know how offended a lot of African Americans were.' And in the aftermath of that, we also lamented how the Eagles organization and Chip Kelly, in particular, handled it. 'Riley is going to receive sensitivity training, he is going to take some time off, he is going to get himself together, blah, blah, blah.' He was gone on a Friday and back on a Tuesday. People had a problem with that."
