Chip: Offense Hasn’t Been ‘Figured Out’


Following Sunday’s loss to the Giants, Jason Avant gave his take on why the offense has stalled of late after finding success early on.

“One thing about this league is that it’s some of the smartest guys in the coaching ranks, some of the smartest players, some of the best players,” he said. “There is going to come a time where they have looked at all the film and evaluated every play that you  a have done and it’s going to give you a breakdown. It’s going to give you a breakdown that says, ‘This percentage of the time, this play is a higher’…they’re going to do all that.

“As the season progresses it’s a chess match. And you’re constantly going to get better. Our coach is definitely going to get better at that, and all of our coaches and all of our players are going to get better at all of those things, and we’re going to start winning those chess matches and also start winning our one-on-ones as players.”

To boil all that down, the receiver seems to be implying that opposing defenses have gotten a beat on  Chip Kelly‘s offense and are currently getting the better of the in-game strategic battles.

Has this offense been solved?

“I don’t think that people have it figured out,” said Kelly at his day-after press conference. “You can turn the tape on and watch six games of whoever you play that I can tell you what they’re going to do. I can tell you what Peyton Manning is going to do but you still have to stop them. It’s still about executing and I think everybody kind of knows going into the game plan, you’re not going to surprise people eight games into a [season].”

Do you have the right guys to execute the plays?

“Yeah. I believe we do,” said Kelly. “I mean we were successful for six games and if I look at the last two and analyze what the situation is, in both games we got to our third quarterback. And I think that’s a difficult proposition, especially when you don’t have a lot of reps to go around at practice.”

Kelly is certainly right about the impact the quarterback situation is having on the effectiveness of this offense. The tape showed that Nick Foles had all sorts of opportunities in the passing game against Dallas but simply couldn’t execute. Matt Barkley has had his share of struggles. Any team in the NFL that loses its top QB — let alone its top two — will almost assuredly experience a dip in production. The musical chairs at quarterback brought on by Michael Vick‘s injury has quite a bit to do with the fact that the Eagles have managed just three points on offense over the last two games.

It’s about talent and its about execution first, but adjustments are also a big part of this game. Kelly was asked how he has fared in that department through his first half-season in the NFL as he goes head-to-head with some of the best football minds on the planet.

“I think when you’re going into a game you have a plan and then obviously every plan has to change as the game starts to unfold because of what you’re seeing and how that game kind of expresses itself. You’re kind of poking and prodding and saying, ‘Hey, will this work for us?’ And then all of a sudden it’s kind of punch-counter-punch,” he said. “They make a move and then you come back the other way with it. The last two weeks we haven’t been good at it. It’s just the way it is. The end result is the end result no matter how you look at it. We haven’t been productive on the offensive side of the ball so we haven’t done a good job in those adjustments.”

QB update

— Foles met with team doctors today and took the imPACT test, but Kelly said he didn’t yet have the results. Similarly, the coach said he didn’t know the results of the MRI Vick had on his hamstring Monday.  The Eagles are not expecting to have Vick available for Sunday’s game against the Raiders.