Are the Eagles and Chip Kelly heading for a divorce?
PostPosted:9 years 7 months ago
What about the children? Who will get Sam?
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-foo ... -part-ways
Are the Eagles and Chip Kelly heading for a divorce?
By Jared Dubin | Staff Writer
November 24, 2015 6:23 pm ET
When losses are piling on top of each other and frustrations are mounting, there are going to be rumors that the head coach is not long for town, especially when the city where those losses are piling and frustrations are mounting is Philadelphia.
So it was not especially surprising when ESPN's Adam Schefter went on Sirius XM NFL Radio on Tuesday and declared of Chip Kelly and the Eagles that "the momentum and signs seem to be piling up against a Chip return to Philadelphia" and added, "I think both sides are sick of each other."
"Chip Kelly, if given a choice, might be comfortable elsewhere," Schefter said.
This tracks with what CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora said earlier this season when the Eagles dropped to 0-3. La Canfora indicated that a big-time college job could be the thing to lure Chip away:
The losses are already mounting, and even in the pedestrian NFC East this team seems headed in the wrong direction, with the Eagles now 0-2 in their division and 0-3 in the conference. And the chatter will only continue that, say, if a head coaching change is executed in Austin, Texas, or some other big-time NCAA program that might just be the siren song to lure Kelly away if things continue down this path in Philadelphia.
The Texas job hasn't opened up, but Southern California did (and Dennis Dodd put Chip No. 1 on his list of 10 potential candidates), and so did Miami. More college jobs will open up and some non-Philly NFL jobs probably will, too.
Would Kelly really jump at the chance to leave just one season after being given control of personnel decisions and not really having let his experiment truly play out? Who knows? We can't read the man's thoughts. What we do know, though, is that if Kelly does leave at the end of the season, there will be a rush from a lot of people to call his tenure in the NFL a "failure."
Is that fair and true on some level? Sure. He would have left the NFL not having won a Super Bowl (assuming a big turnaround this season isn't in the cards), having lasted only three years in the job, and having spent only one offseason in charge of personnel. And that one offseason was one in which he made a widely panned series of moves that didn't entirely work out. On that level, he would have failed.
(A bunch of the guys he cut aren't exactly lighting it up elsewhere, either; it's not as though Evan Mathis, Todd Herremans, Trent Cole and Cary Williams are making him look silly for moving on, and LeSean McCoy has been productive on the field but has also been in and out of the lineup and appears to have lost a half step or more.)
But he also had some degree of success. Kelly went 10-6 in each of his first two seasons, though only one of those two teams made the playoffs. He turned offenses quarterbacked by Nick Foles and Mark Sanchez, for the most part, into efficient, explosive units for the better part of two years. Considering the talent level of those two players, that's pretty impressive. Surprisingly, more defensive players than offensive players on the roster saw their play blossom under Kelly: Fletcher Cox, Vinny Curry, Mychal Kendricks, Brandon Graham, Bennie Logan and more have all seen their level of play rise over the past three seasons. Kelly isn't "in charge" of the defense the same way he is the offense, but the head coach is still "in charge" of everything.
Are those major, franchise-changing successes? No. But they are successes, and if the Kelly era ends after this season, we shouldn't pretend they didn't happen.
Of course, this is all academic. Kelly has maintained multiple times that he's not going anywhere. In fact, he was asked Tuesday specifically about taking a college job, and replied with this:
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-foo ... -part-ways
Are the Eagles and Chip Kelly heading for a divorce?
By Jared Dubin | Staff Writer
November 24, 2015 6:23 pm ET
When losses are piling on top of each other and frustrations are mounting, there are going to be rumors that the head coach is not long for town, especially when the city where those losses are piling and frustrations are mounting is Philadelphia.
So it was not especially surprising when ESPN's Adam Schefter went on Sirius XM NFL Radio on Tuesday and declared of Chip Kelly and the Eagles that "the momentum and signs seem to be piling up against a Chip return to Philadelphia" and added, "I think both sides are sick of each other."
"Chip Kelly, if given a choice, might be comfortable elsewhere," Schefter said.
This tracks with what CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora said earlier this season when the Eagles dropped to 0-3. La Canfora indicated that a big-time college job could be the thing to lure Chip away:
The losses are already mounting, and even in the pedestrian NFC East this team seems headed in the wrong direction, with the Eagles now 0-2 in their division and 0-3 in the conference. And the chatter will only continue that, say, if a head coaching change is executed in Austin, Texas, or some other big-time NCAA program that might just be the siren song to lure Kelly away if things continue down this path in Philadelphia.
The Texas job hasn't opened up, but Southern California did (and Dennis Dodd put Chip No. 1 on his list of 10 potential candidates), and so did Miami. More college jobs will open up and some non-Philly NFL jobs probably will, too.
Would Kelly really jump at the chance to leave just one season after being given control of personnel decisions and not really having let his experiment truly play out? Who knows? We can't read the man's thoughts. What we do know, though, is that if Kelly does leave at the end of the season, there will be a rush from a lot of people to call his tenure in the NFL a "failure."
Is that fair and true on some level? Sure. He would have left the NFL not having won a Super Bowl (assuming a big turnaround this season isn't in the cards), having lasted only three years in the job, and having spent only one offseason in charge of personnel. And that one offseason was one in which he made a widely panned series of moves that didn't entirely work out. On that level, he would have failed.
(A bunch of the guys he cut aren't exactly lighting it up elsewhere, either; it's not as though Evan Mathis, Todd Herremans, Trent Cole and Cary Williams are making him look silly for moving on, and LeSean McCoy has been productive on the field but has also been in and out of the lineup and appears to have lost a half step or more.)
But he also had some degree of success. Kelly went 10-6 in each of his first two seasons, though only one of those two teams made the playoffs. He turned offenses quarterbacked by Nick Foles and Mark Sanchez, for the most part, into efficient, explosive units for the better part of two years. Considering the talent level of those two players, that's pretty impressive. Surprisingly, more defensive players than offensive players on the roster saw their play blossom under Kelly: Fletcher Cox, Vinny Curry, Mychal Kendricks, Brandon Graham, Bennie Logan and more have all seen their level of play rise over the past three seasons. Kelly isn't "in charge" of the defense the same way he is the offense, but the head coach is still "in charge" of everything.
Are those major, franchise-changing successes? No. But they are successes, and if the Kelly era ends after this season, we shouldn't pretend they didn't happen.
Of course, this is all academic. Kelly has maintained multiple times that he's not going anywhere. In fact, he was asked Tuesday specifically about taking a college job, and replied with this: