Chip: ‘We’re Not Looking Into Safeties’

Hours before Nate Allen was beat by John Brown for a game-changing 75-yard touchdown, a report surfaced that the Eagles are looking to upgrade their safety position prior to Tuesday’s 4 p.m. deadline. Chip Kelly addressed those whispers during his day-after press conference.

“No, I don’t know where that report came from,” said Kelly. “A lot of times the people that float that are the people that want their safety picked up. I may look into that but we’re not actively looking to upgrade.

“No, we’re not looking into safeties. If someone calls us and says they want to give us their safety then we would take a safety, but I think the whole trade deadline in the National Football League is a little overblown. I think there was one trade in the entire league last year.”

That Eagles were involved in that trade, sending Isaac Sopoaga and a sixth-round pick to the Patriots for a fifth-rounder.

Kelly was asked how he feels about his safeties overall and Allen in particular.

“I think they’ve done a good job. I think Nate got beat once. I think he had two outstanding plays. You look at the fumble and the recovery, did a hell of a job there. He bit the cheese and he admits it.  I don’t think you can be defined by one play.”

Some other news and notes from the presser:

— There were plenty of questions about Nick Foles, who ranks towards the bottom of the league in completion percentage, quarterback rating and turnovers after seven games. Where does Kelly stand when it comes to his quarterback?

“I think Nick’s — what’s our record now, 5-2? — Nick’s 5-2 in my opinion,” said Kelly. “I think you rate your quarterback in terms of how you’re winning, how you’re losing, and in both games we’ve lost we’ve had a chance to win the game on the offensive side of the ball, we just didn’t execute in those situations.”

Has he seen any signs of progress?

“Yeah, I see some big things,” he said. “I thought the [50-yard] throw to Riley Cooper was a huge throw. I thought the pass to Jeremy Maclin on the fake screen left, coming back the other way, to stand in there in the rush and throw that football, there were a lot of real positive things from him so yeah, I do see improvement from him.”

— Evan Mathis suggested Jason Kelce could be ready for this week’s game against the Texans. How’s he coming along?

“With Jason and that injury, it’s not something where we don’t want to rush him back early and then all of a sudden he misses an extended period of time after that,” said Kelly. “Want to make sure he is 100 percent healthy. Got to get him back into it. He did a good job in terms of what he could do and couldn’t do last week, he jumped in a little bit in team drills really being a look-squad guy for our defense and doing some different things and probably had some residual soreness from it just because he hadn’t played football in a while. But didn’t seem like there was anything that affected the injury so we’ll see how he progresses this week.”

Todd Herremans left the game briefly with an elbow injury. Kelly offered no further update. Brandon Boykin seemed to be working through something (a hamstring?) against Arizona. Is that right?

“Not that I know of, no,” Kelly responded. As for Mychal Kendricks, the plan was to limit his snaps to about 15-20 (he played 22) and have him work in dime packages only as he eased back in after sitting out with a calf strain.

“I thought he did a good job when he  was out there. He obviously brings so much athleticism to the position. We’ll see this week in training if we can increase his role. With that injury from what I understand, it gets fatigued so it’s how much can he handle.”

— On the decision to kick a field goal on 4th-and-goal rather than go for it.

“Besides those two X-plays, I think our defense is playing at a really high level right now. And our defense has finished off games: they finished off the Rams game, they finished off the Redskins game, they’ve been in those situations before. And if I had to do it again I’d do the exact same thing again, I’d put it on our defense,” he said.