In defense of Chip Kelly’s head-scratching moves, Chip Kelly and Sam Bradford’s ACL
Chip Kelly made his name at Oregon, a Pacific-12 school that had never been a football powerhouse and didn’t get a whole lot of major recruiting talent until he got there.
He took over that program and implemented an offensive system made to demolish teams.
He also very quickly overtook Jim Harbaugh at Stanford and Pete Carroll at Southern California as the “new sheriff” in the PAC-12.
The Ducks weren’t just beating teams, they were humiliating them with Kelly’s teams often scoring 50 points by halftime. No matter how good his skill players on offense looked in college, however, they were never that great in the NFL.
That points to Kelly’s system being the catalyst in all of this.
Fast-forward a couple of 10-6 NFL seasons later and people are full believers in Kelly. He made Nick Foles look like the best quarterback on Earth for a 13-game stretch in 2013.
Tuesday, he traded him for Sam Bradford’s clumsy footwork and accurate arm.
LeSean McCoy, Kelly’s former running back, had been a top-five production guy consistently throughout most of his career.
Yeah, Kelly’s traded him too, this time for a linebacker coming off ACL surgery, because McCoy wanted too much money. Between Kiko Alonso and Bradford, Kelly sure has a lot of faith in ACL surgery.
Oh, and he let the Eagles’ No. 1 receiver go somewhere else for the second-consecutive year.
The method behind all this madness is belief in his system.
Kelly believes if he can make Foles look like a superstar, then why can’t he do the same with Bradford who — assuming he stays healthy — is more talented than Foles and ran a similar no-huddle offensive system during college at Oklahoma.
And if all else fails, he just re-signed Mark Sanchez, who set the Eagles’ franchise record last year for completion percentage at 64.1 percent.
Ryan Matthews, who the Eagles also just picked up, resembles a poor man’s McCoy (again, assuming he stays healthy).
All Kelly needs is players with skills and he’ll turn them into players with reputations.
Also, do not underestimate DeMarco Murray and Bradford being college teammates, because by the time anyone reads this Murray could be an Eagle as well. But the Eagles are using that extra money that has been lying around from letting offensive stars go, build a defense to support Kelly’s offensive empire.
They have already acquired Alonso, Byron Maxwell and Walter Thurmond III.
The man might look crazy, but trust me, he knows what he’s doing.
Jimmy Watkins is a freshman studying journalism and is a sports writer for The Post. Let him know what you think about Chip Kelly’s system on Twitter @JAjimbojr or through email jw331813@ohio.edu.
