Chip Kelly: 'Gotta Put Your Big Boy Pants On And Get Ready To Play Another Game'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- It was Chip Kelly's fourth NFL game. His 1-2 Eagles headed to Denver to take on Peyton Manning and a red hot Broncos team, a team that would eventually go on to win the AFC Championship months later.
The Eagles got crushed 52-20 falling to 1-3. However, Kelly and his squad rebounded brilliantly, finishing the season as 10-6 NFC East Champions and earning themselves a first-round playoff game in Philadelphia.
Fast forward about a year and a half later to Sunday. The 7-2 Eagles went to Lambeau Field to face a scorching hot Aaron Rodgers, and they got smoked. The score, 53-20, was eerily similar to one year prior.
"You guard from being too high and you guard from being too low, and you move on," Kelly told Angelo Cataldi and the 94WIP Morning Show on Monday. "I don't think anybody feels sorry for us around the league. 'Poor Philadelphia, let's take it easy on them,' that's going to happen. It's a big boy league, gotta put your big boy pants on and get ready to play another game."
Listen to Chip Kelly on the 94WIP Morning Show:
Kelly, since that September 29th, 2013 blowout loss in Denver, had won 16 of his last 21 regular games, before losing this Sunday. Rodgers, who threw for 341 yards, three touchdowns, and zero interceptions against the Eagles, has remarkably not thrown a pick at Lambeau Field since December 2nd, 2012.
"I said before the game, he's playing quarterback at the highest level right now in the National Football League," Kelly said of Rodgers. "That's not taking anything from how well Tom Brady's playing right now or how well Peyton Manning is playing right now, I just think you understand that and just, you know he's a heck of a player and it's a heck of a challenge. And we understood that going in, and we didn't do a good enough job."
If the Eagles and Packers see each other again this season, it will be in 2015, in a win-or-go-home situation. Kelly hopes he gets that opportunity.
"We hope we play them again at some point in time," Kelly said of the 7-3 Packers. "But, he [Rodgers] did play well, you gotta give them credit. I think sometimes you always have to give the other team credit. It was just one of those situations when you blitz him, he got the ball out hot and if you didn't blitz him he was picking you apart."
"Every time we got---we threw pressure on him [Rodgers], he got the ball out extremely quick and hot and to receivers," said Kelly. "Basically, we didn't even have any answers last night, I can tell you that."
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