PHILADELPHIA -- The incident in which Riley Cooper was caught on video shouting the N-word at a security guard working a Kenny Chesney concert was entirely Cooper's fault. He appeared intoxicated, and his indefensible use of a racial slur was hard to comprehend, let alone accept.

Some of the consequences of the incident were not entirely Cooper’s fault, or at least he couldn’t have anticipated them in that regrettable moment.

The Philadelphia Eagles could very simply have released Cooper after that video surfaced on the Internet. He was a marginal player, and his continued presence on the team was going to create tension with at least some, and possibly most, of his teammates.

Chip Kelly, the man who talked about creating a winning culture in his first summer as an NFL head coach, decided to keep Cooper. On top of that, he decided that Cooper would start and, after a very good 2013 season, that Cooper deserved a five-year, $22.5 million contract.

It was Kelly’s reaction, rather than Cooper’s initial action, that led to so many of those unpredictable consequences.

Not only did Cooper’s stock rise after his embarrassing public misdeed, Kelly also decided to release wide receiver DeSean Jackson that offseason.

Jackson, a Pro Bowler with 356 receptions for 6,117 yards and 32 touchdowns on his résumé, did not fit Kelly’s culture. Cooper, with 93 receptions for 1,514 yards and 13 touchdowns in four seasons, did.

That led to the first suggestions that Kelly had racial reasons behind his personnel moves. Those suggestions were reinforced when Kelly traded away his leading rusher, LeSean McCoy, and McCoy cited race as a reason.

“You see how fast he got rid of all the good players,” McCoy told ESPN’s Mike Rodak last year. “Especially all the good black players. He got rid of them the fastest. That's the truth. ... It's hard to explain with him. But there's a reason he got rid of all the black players -- the good ones -- like that.”

McCoy didn’t mention Cooper, but he did cite the release of Jackson as an example.

Since late December, the Eagles have been scrubbing the NovaCare Complex of all things Kelly-related. On the very first day league rules permitted, they released Cooper. Clearly that move had more to do with sending a message than with merely clearing salary cap space (although it does clear about $2.9 million under the cap).

And that’s fine, as far as that goes. But what’s the real message here? When the video of Cooper’s rant surfaced, the Eagles met to discuss their reaction. That meant Kelly, general manager Howie Roseman and owner Jeff Lurie, among others. The owner certainly could have overruled his new head coach on a matter that reflected directly on the entire franchise.

Cooper stayed. So his caught-on-video racial epithet was not enough to cause the Eagles to release him. His association with the head coach that Lurie and Roseman soured on, however, got Cooper fired.

So the message may not be as obvious, or as clear, as it was intended to be.