Fixing the Philadelphia Eagles

Noah Smith NFL

With the early season struggles of the Philadelphia Eagles, suddenly everyone is breaking their legs jumping off of the Chip Kelly bandwagon — proclaiming that they saw it coming. Everyone has their magic fix for the offense: “If LeSean McCoy were still here they’d be winning,” one will say, or “Jeremy Maclin is the magical missing piece.” I’d even bet …

Chip Kelly Update: The Dead Zone Lives!

Mark Saltveit FishWrap, FishWrap Archive

Some people call this “the Dead Zone,” the part of the NFL season where everyone is on vacation, training camp rosters have been filled to 90 and the draft, OTAs and minicamp are over. It’s the boring time when nothing happens, right? I don’t think so. In some ways, this is the most interesting time of the year. Writers have …

Chip Kelly Update: Hang-gliding in a Hurricane

Mark Saltveit FishWrap, FishWrap Archive

Chip Kelly began his first stint as an NFL general manager the same way he coaches — fast, decisive, and not giving a damn with what anybody thinks. In the first three days of the official NFL year, when free agency and trading first become possible again, he outmaneuvered the entire rest of the league put together by adding 7 …

Chip Kelly Update: DeSean Scored & the Eagles Won

Mark Saltveit FishWrap, FishWrap Archive

Philadelphia played its long awaited showdown with the Washington LOLSkins and it was even nastier and more dramatic than anyone could have imagined. DeSean Jackson has been cocky and attitudinal since he played at Cal. No one doubted that he wanted to get revenge against the team that cut him over the summer (and cost him millions of dollars a …

Chip Kelly Journal — A Defining Moment: DeSean Jackson’s Release

Joe Kearns Coach's Opinion

Conventional wisdom dictates that a Philadelphia Eagles team whose offense earned the second-highest total yards would likely stay the course with its current personnel. Anyone who made that assumption ignored the fact that Chip Kelly does not care about conventional wisdom. The release of DeSean Jackson, the Eagles’ most dangerous receiver, this past March was a defining moment for Kelly. The …

The Huff-Kelly Reunion

Joe Kearns Analysis

It’s only year two of the Chip Kelly era in Philadelphia, and the Eagles have already overhauled their receiver group. They released three-time Pro Bowler DeSean Jackson and veteran slot receiver Jason Avant. They re-signed Riley Cooper and Jeremy Maclin. Then, they traded up in the second round of the 2014 NFL Draft to select Vanderbilt’s Jordan Matthews, but the front …

Chip Kelly Update: Eagles, Ducks and Chemistry

Mark Saltveit FishWrap, FishWrap Archive

The NFL off season is completely different than college football’s in one significant way: the NFL team gets to pick its players through the draft, the trade and free agency, and fans get to speculate endlessly over who they should or shouldn’t choose.  For a college team, it’s more like being an old-fashioned high school girl at a dance, trying …

Chip Kelly Update: Torn ACLs and Racial Incidents

Mark Saltveit FishWrap, FishWrap Archive

feature photo by Jimmy Kempski Training camp finally opened for the entire Eagles team, and Chip Kelly faced adversity almost immediately.  First, injuries: not one but TWO ACL tears in the first three days, by #2 receiver Jeremy Maclin and newly acquired linebacker Jason Phillips.  Maclin is a big deal for the Eagles, despite criticism for softness (some call him “self-tackling”); …