This is the most confusing football team ever. The offense is completely misfiring. Nick Foles led the league in long throws (over 20 yards) last year; in 2014, he’s 4 for 31, with three interceptions. Sunday was his personal low point in a miserable season; scrambling for a first down, he fumbled away the ball untouched as he rolled forward …
The 3-0 Eagles steamed into brand new Levi’s Stadium, hoping to kick the 1-2 San Francisco 49ers while they were down (two key defenders out, the coach fighting with management, and Colin Kaepernick showing his flaws). They left dismayed, perhaps exposed, with fans squabbling, coach Chip Kelly defensive and Nick Foles’s big contract payday at the end of this year …
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 …
A pickup basketball game between the football coaches of the University of New Hampshire and Brown University in the 1990s was the first of many meetings between two future NFL head coaches. Then-New Hampshire running backs coach Chip Kelly and a Brown assistant coach named Bill O’Brien exchanged ideas about X’s and O’s on the first of many occasions. O’Brien was …
The Philadelphia Eagles are playing terribly. Nick Foles has been blind to wide-open receivers and throws erratically when he does spy them. LeSean McCoy, 2013’s leading rusher, has yet to reach 80 yards by land in a game. Four of the seven offensive linemen and three of five interior linebackers (if you count ILB/OLB Travis Long) are out injured and …
Let’s call the Oregon Ducks’ football program the ‘father’ and the Philadelphia Eagles’ version the ‘son’. (Yes, Chip Kelly is the parent of both, but don’t overthink this metaphor into something creepy.) With all due respect for South Dakota State, both teams had their first real test this past weekend, and the family resemblance was striking. Both teams were favored but …
The Philadelphia Eagles finalized their roster this week, polished their trickiest schemes in closed practices and got ready for the season to actually begin. The Eagles are 10.5 point favorites at home against the Jacksonville Jaguars, led by quarterback Chad Henne. Older fans will remember Chip Kelly’s second game as Oregon’s offensive coordinator in 2007 when the Ducks crushed the …
Chip Kelly doesn’t just want his skill players to have speed. He places a high premium on athletic offensive linemen who can execute their blocks both at the line of scrimmage and in space. It is easy to see how Lane Johnson‘s rare athletic ability convinced Kelly to select the Oklahoma offensive tackle with the fourth overall pick last year. …
It was Dec. 1, 2013. With the score at 7-7 in the second quarter, the Philadelphia Eagles marched to the Arizona Cardinals’ 6-yard line. It was at this moment when Chip Kelly unveiled a surprising wrinkle. If Nick Foles was there, who was lined up as quarterback? Meet Brad Smith. …
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 …
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’s first season in the NFL ended with a field goal – kicked by the New Orleans Saints as time expired in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. It was a rough ending to a great season, and very likely Michael Vick’s last game as an Eagle. No one is happy about the loss, close as it was, but …