I understand that it’s easy to overreact when teams lose four out of five games, with the last of those losses coming in blowout fashion on national television. And those who still choose to defend Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly will rightly point out that he won 10 games in each of his first two NFL seasons.
The problem is that the 2015 season was the one Kelly bet the farm on.
He went all in by pushing for full autonomy and then using that in order to completely overhaul a roster that was already working. Some might argue he tried to fix what wasn’t broken, and now the Eagles are 4-7 with no DeSean Jacksons or LeSean McCoys to save the day.
The reality is Kelly may be too stubborn for this league. Time and again he has discarded high-quality players that it appears didn’t perfectly fit his system and he continues to push that system down everyone’s throat despite the fact its element of surprise has disappeared.
What Kelly does is no longer mysterious, novel or effective, and that’s a big problem. He hasn’t adjusted schematically and has inexplicably gutted a talented roster.
Why? It’s possible he became cocky after taking the Eagles to the playoffs in 2013. But the reality is that playoff team was built almost entirely by Howie Roseman and Andy Reid. Reid didn’t get as much out of what was a talented team in 2012 (his final season) but that was an off year and the Eagles weren’t exactly healthy.
According to Football Outsiders, Philadelphia was the healthiest team in the NFL during Kelly’s first two years. And while some credit for that belongs to his sports science program, that was in reality at least a small aberration.
In that field, the Eagles have regressed back toward the mean this season. Combine that with Kelly’s shortsighted personnel moves and his stubborn attitude regarding an offense that is actually pretty easy to figure out and it’s no wonder the Eagles are 4-7.
They can still rebound and make the playoffs in the wretched NFC East, but unless Kelly parks his hubris and rethinks his approach to running an NFL team, a last-gasp playoff run now would only delay the inevitable.
A year or two down the road, it’s hard to envision Kelly anywhere but a college campus.
