Kelly: We Have Confidence In Cody Parkey

Chip Kelly told reporters after the Eagles’ 26-24 loss to the Falcons that he is confident in Cody Parkey, after Parkey missed a potential game-winning field goal late in the fourth quarter.

“We have a lot of confidence in Cody Parkey,” Kelly said. “He’s a Pro Bowl kicker, and I’ve seen him make a lot of kicks for us.”

Parkey missed a 44-yard field goal attempt from the middle of the field after an Eagles drive failed to keep moving into Atlanta territory.

“On third-and-one, we didn’t get a lot of movement up front,” Kelly explained, “and we kind of felt that — it was a 44-yarder, right in the middle of the field, so we didn’t think of it as a tough one. [Parkey]’s hit those before.

“[Parkey] was fine. He was fine on every other kick today. He was just — I don’t know if the timing was off on that? You’ll look at the film in terms of what it was.”

Here are some other highlights from Kelly’s post-game press conference:

— Kelly touched on the problems the Eagles had running against the Atlanta defensive line. The Eagles rushed for 63 yards on 16 carries.

“We couldn’t really get much movement on their defensive line,” Kelly said. “They had a lot of new guys. Beasley, Claiborne, some guys we saw in the preseason that we had a lot of respect for. Some difficult match-ups there.

“They did a nice job inside and shut some things down. They do a good job inside, so we had to get the ball to the perimeter. We felt like we got the ball to the perimeter in the run game in the second half.”

— Julio Jones caught nine passes for 141 yards and two touchdowns, and shredded the Eagles’ secondary. Kelly talked about what he saw on those passes.

“We didn’t generate a good-enough pass rush on some of those,” Kelly said. “And then we weren’t close enough in coverage on some of those other ones.”

Kelly explained why Malcolm Jenkins played against Jones when he lined up in the slot.

“We didn’t know where [Jones] was going to line up, so there were some match-ups where their best receiver was going to be in the slot,” Kelly said, “and we felt most comfortable with [Jenkins] in that situation.”

— On the Eagles’ slow first half, and second-half comeback.

“We didn’t play very well at all in the first half,” Kelly said. “You give up 10 points right there in the last two minutes. I told those guys there at halftime, we played a lot better in the second half, but we did not come to play in the first half.

“We’re going to learn. I thought our approach and what we did in the second half, we can build upon that, and then the first half we correct that.”