Chip Kelly Says Return Of Andy Reid Will Not Be A Distraction
By Joseph Santoliquito
Philadelphia, PA (CBS) — Chip Kelly addressed a number of things, after the Eagles' last-second 33-30 loss on Sunday to the San Diego Chargers. Kelly admitted there is still a learning process. With him, with his team and the defensive schemes instituted by coordinator Bill Davis.
"I made mistakes, I think we've all made mistakes," Kelly said. "No one coaches a perfect game, no one plays a perfect game. But you have to learn from those mistakes and make sure that they don't happen again. I also know I think offense, defense and special teams made mistakes, coaching staff included. We all need to make better plays. There were seven opportunities offensively. We had three punts, three made field goals and a missed field goal where we could have had drives to put together drives that put us down the field.
"We had a touchdown called back because of a penalty. We missed a field goal on special teams and missed an opportunity to recover a fumble on special teams. We gave up almost 40 yards on that kickoff, even though that was after a penalty, and that's not an excuse. And I think if you ask anyone on our special teams, they take that as a challenge. We can break their back if we can kick one off here and pin them deep. Instead of saying, woe is me, we got a penalty, how do we get out of this? I don't think any of our guys feel sorry for themselves. They understand what they have to do. They have to make plays when they have an opportunity to make plays."
Kelly also ruled out his team being possibly being distracted with Andy Reid visiting Lincoln Financial Field with the 2-0 Kansas City Chiefs this Thursday. He did speak to his team about it.
"I think they're locked in," Kelly said. "We met today and we talked about the Kansas City Chiefs, so that's not a concern."
What could be is s defense that had its troubles on Sunday with the San Diego offense, and an experienced quarterback like Philip Rivers, who called plays at the line of scrimmage. The Chiefs have an experienced quarterback in Alex Smith, who rarely turns the ball over and not easily rattled.
It could be more of a cat-and-mouse game, with Smith making changes at the line and the Eagles attempting to adjust to those changes. It made the Chargers very effective on Sunday.
"They were, they definitely were, that was part of their whole package was," Kelly said, about the Chargers calling their plays at the line of scrimmage. "They'd get up, take a look, then go back. They checked, we checked, and they checked again. When you're playing a quarterback like Philip Rivers, I think they basically put the game in his hands. He was making a lot of checks at the line of scrimmage, based on the looks that we were presenting. That's what you get when you go against someone as talented as him."
Kelly said there were times the Eagles tried disguising their look. That didn't seem to work, either. There were times Rivers checked, and the Eagles counter-checked, only to have Rivers check off again.
"It becomes a cat-and-mouse game as you get going," Kelly said. "But they have to snap the ball in a certain point in time and we have to be lined up and ready to go. When they're over the ball, you just can't line up and say they're going to take a look at our looks and let's not give them a look, because they can snap the ball at that point in time. We have to prepared with a defense when he gets up on the ball. We have to do a job of trying to give him a disguise and try to make sure it's not totally something he's going to see. We can rotate into some things, but sometimes your disguise ends up being a liability because you're not close enough in coverage when you're not that far off."
Joseph Santoliquito is a contributing sports blogger for CBS Philly.
