The Philadelphia Eagles lost their season opener Monday night.
But that’s not the bad part. The bad part is that they didn’t get blown out.
For awhile, it looked like Chip Kelly’s team was going to get humiliated in primetime. It was quite a sight to behold. They trailed 20-3 at halftime, looked completely lost on both sides of the ball and the only up-tempo part of their touted offensive attack was the quickness in which it went three-and out or turned the ball over. You could feel the rage of Eagles fans building. But then Sam Bradford caught fire in the second half and the Eagles stormed back and ultimately took the lead, before falling to a late Matt Bryant field goal. The Eagles lost by two points. On the road. To the Atlanta Falcons, a team that was 6-10 a year ago.
Losing close games in Atlanta to the middling Falcons in the bland Georgia Dome is what mediocre NFL teams do. The Eagles right now are a mediocre team – and it’s awful.
In Chip Kelly we were promised transformative NFL greatness, we were told he would revolutionize the game at the professional level. Who wouldn’t want to see that? You don’t have to be an Eagles fan to love the idea of the staid, safe and corporate NFL being turned upside-down by some cocky, little college coach from New Hampshire. Imagine the joy we’d all receive from seeing the looks on the faces of smug NFL lifers like Bill Belichick as their teams gave up 50 or 60 points to Kelly’s team, helpless to stop it, even with the most ingenious cheating program. It would lift the nation and bring us together in the spirit of common schadenfreude.
But the known flipside was that Kelly could be nothing but hype. After all, he hadn’t even won a championship in college football. Steve Spurrier had at least won a national title with the Florida Gators before taking Dan Snyder’s money and failing massively in the NFL in Washington DC in 2002 and 2003. Kelly’s entry into the pro ranks was hyped twice as much as Spurrier’s, despite the fact that he had half the resume. It was the perfect setup for a flameout of historic proportions. And in Philadelphia of all places. The carnage would be unimaginable. And fun. It would be unimaginably fun.
That was the promise of Chip Kelly: Dominating football or disastrous football. Either way, the Eagles would entertain us.
But now more than two years into Kelly’s tenure and we are not all that entertained. He’s not humiliating Bill Belichick, he’s making some guy named Dan Quinn smile.
Here’s one Philadelphia headline from the opening defeat: “Even in defeat, Bradford passed test.” That sure is a glass half-full viewpoint of the Eagles. Half-full is not what we want to see with the Eagles. We want the glass spilling over with champagne, enough to get us all drunk on the success ... or shattered all over the ground, sharp pieces of glass cutting anyone who dares enter the bombed-out remains of Lincoln Financial Field.
Another headline: “Kelly’s road to NFL greatness behind schedule.” And another: “Sam Bradford shakes off 1st half with big 2nd in Eagles’ loss.” No, no, no, no, no. These are the headlines generated by mediocrity. The NFL has plenty of that already. There are the Bengals and the Panthers and the Chargers and the Dolphins and probably many more teams I’m forgetting at the moment because they’re boring and don’t matter. We want to see these headlines from the Eagles:
“Dan Snyder hilariously begs for mercy in 120-point loss to Eagles”
“Bill Belichick sobs on the sidelines as Chip Kelly exposes him as football fraud”
Or:
“Chip Kelly arrested by Philadelphia police after Mark Sanchez’s 13-turnover performance”
“Philadelphia in flames as Eagles suffer 16th consecutive 30-point defeat”
Kelly had his chance to get the Eagles a win in Atlanta and at least renew our hope that he is not just another NFL coach, just one who is average at a much higher tempo. Trailing 26-24 with 2:36 remaining, the Eagles faced 4th-and-1 from the Atlanta 26. Kelly touts himself as a champion of modern analytics and analytics, unequivocally, tell you go for it on 4th-and-1. Especially, one can assume, with an offense as potent as the one Kelly believes he has built. Great! The NFL can use coaches with the guts to go against the conventional wisdom, the stupid wisdom, that says you attempt a long field goal in that situation. With all the odds in the Eagles favor, they leave the offense on the field, pick up the first down there, continue running clock and move in for a game-winning touchdown or chip shot field goal. Easy. You don’t even have to be a football genius to figure that out. Hooray! The Eagles are 1-0! Watch out, NFL!
Except Kelly didn’t do that. He sent kicker Cody Parkey onto the field, Parkey badly missed from 44 yards and the supposed Eagles genius looked like every other coach who doesn’t play to win.
Here’s the part where I say that’s it’s only Week 1 and it’s foolish to overreact. That is true. Except it’s not really Week 1. Kelly has coached 34 games for the Eagles now. In his debut season, 2013, Philadelphia went 10-6, but lost in the first round of the playoffs. Last year, in Year Two, the Eagles went 10-6 again, but didn’t even make the playoffs. Now they’re 0-1 and have lost their opener for the first time under Kelly. It’s not so much that they’re trending downward, they’re trending horizontally. Flat and boring.
Please make this team what we hoped it would be, Chip Kelly. Soon. Now. Make it great. Or make it terrible. Just please make it entertaining.
