Chip Kelly On Kiko Alonso: Not An 'Injure Reserve Candidate'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Eagles fans have been holding their breath for Kiko Alonso, who injured his left knee 10 days ago against the Dallas Cowboys.
Alonso, who missed the entire 2014 season after tearing the ACL in that same left knee, originally was expected to miss just a few weeks with an ACL sprain. However, it was later reported that Alonso suffered a partial---but not full---ACL tear and traveled to Florida to get a second opinion for Dr. James Andrews early this week.
Chip Kelly told reporters on Wednesday that he doesn't believe surgery is needed.
"He's doing some rehab work [in Florida]," Kelly said of Alonso. "I don't think it's surgery, I mean he's coming back on Friday. We'll see where he is then. He said they're rehabbing him, it's what I was told."
The Eagles lost guard Andrew Gardner for the season last Sunday against the Jets and when asked about offensive line depth, Kelly slipped in an interesting positive tidbit on Alonso, admitting that he is not a candidate for the injured reserve list.
"We'll see. We'd like to have nine [offensive lineman], that's the ideal number for us," Kelly said. "But because we have two linebackers down that aren't injure reserve candidate type guys in Mychal [Kendricks] and Kiko [Alonso], so you gotta kind of figure out where do I get that extra spot right now. And for us, at this kind of time, it was in the offensive line. You get another injury somewhere you may have to compensate somewhere else. In the ideal world, we'd like to have nine offensive lineman on the 53, but right now we couldn't do that just because of those two injures at the inside linebacker position."