Eagles Wake-Up Call: Three Kelly Leftovers

Chip Kelly spent about 20 minutes Monday answering questions from the assembled media at the NovaCare Complex.

T-Mac covered some of the main topics already, but here are three leftovers.

1. Don’t be surprised if you hear a lot this week about how the Eagles rallied back from a 3-5 start to win five in a row.

“I expect them to bounce back,” Kelly said. “They’ve bounced back before, so that’s what I’m anticipating happening.

“This game is a tough game to play. It’s a tough game. You never really understand the outcomes. Sometimes it’s tough to try to wrestle with it and justify how did this happen and that happen and whatnot. But we’re on a weekly schedule. We have to get ready for the Bears now. We can’t let the loss to the Vikings affect us for two weeks.”

The Eagles have been good about moving on to the next game. And considering what’s at stake against Chicago and Dallas, I don’t expect that to be a problem this week.

The practice schedule probably helps too. They get Monday off, are practicing and correcting mistakes on Tuesday morning and start to watch film of the next opponent on Tuesday afternoon.

2. Between the personal foul penalties and DeSean Jackson’s sideline frustrations, it was clear that the Eagles lost their composure on Sunday.

Cary Williams was called for unnecessary roughness in the fourth quarter.

“He [Billy Davis] just sat him down because he was a little distraught about the call,” Kelly said. “We needed to have clear head when we were out there and we were playing.”

Kelly later expanded on the issue as a whole.

“No matter what goes on, we still have to keep our poise out there,” he said. “We have to be able to play the next snap. If we do have a bad play, we need to move on to the next play. We need to learn what we did on that play, in terms of if it was a mistake on our part and how do we correct it. But we can’t let the last play affect us on the next play. That’s a lesson for all of us to learn.

“Just like we can’t let the Vikings game affect the Bears game. That’s easier said than done for all of us. I think we all have to be that way. Sometimes there is a critical call and guys are getting on the official. Hey, he ain’t going to change the call. Let’s move on, let’s get on the next play and let’s see what we can control and what we can affect. And that is kind of what we talk about all the time. But you still have to live it.”

3. Between LeSean McCoy’s light workload, the kickoff strategy and the decision to go for it on 4th-and-1 from their own 24, Kelly probably faced more criticism after this loss than any other this season.

He was accountable during his session with reporters and seems to understand what comes with the territory.

“Everybody’s happy and jumping around last week, and now all of a sudden the sky is falling,” Kelly said. “That’s the way it is. That’s what this game is all about. That’s what this deal is all about. It’s got to be a one‑week season. For five straight weeks, we did a pretty good job, and Mondays were pretty good around here. Today, Mondays aren’t pretty good, but they shouldn’t be pretty good because we were disappointing and we didn’t do what we were supposed to do yesterday. You can’t make excuses. We’re going to watch the tape. We’re going to make corrections and come back tomorrow and get ready for the Bears.”

WHAT YOU MISSED

A position-by-position game review of the Eagles’ offensive performance.

Eagles-Vikings, the day after. Introducing the Kapadia Concern Scale, plus five thoughts, snap counts, game balls, No-22 and more.

T-Mac explains how the defense lost its grip.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING

Peter King of The MMQB has the Eagles 14th in his power rankings:

Some alarming failures on defense, but it’s the same D that allowed 21 or fewer in the previous nine games. Lucky for the Eagles, Dallas was Dallas Sunday.

Brian Solomon assesses the state of the Eagles after Sunday’s loss:

The great nine-game run leading up to Sunday seemed to be the defense gelling, but most of it was the horrendous, mistake-prone quarterbacks the Eagles faced. Only two of the QBs the Eagles faced in that span have positive DVOA on the year, and they played one of those in a blizzard. Matt Cassel could easily have been another one of those lightweights, but he did his best 2008 impression, throwing for the 4th-most yards of his career. That came despite the Eagles front seven holding the Adrian Peterson-less Vikings to just 2.4 yards per carry.

COMING UP

We’ll talk to Pat Shurmur, Billy Davis and the players down at the NovaCare Complex.

Follow Sheil Kapadia on Twitter and e-mail him at skapadia@phillymag.com.
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