Chip Says Nothing To Cooper-Sanchez Flap

Riley Cooper didn’t have a great week.

He made strange jokes about Jeremy Maclin and his contract status leading up to the Dallas game —  comments that Maclin didn’t find particularly amusing. Then in the fourth quarter against the Cowboys, he caught the ire of Mark Sanchez for apparently not following the quarterback’s instructions at the line of scrimmage. The Eagles had to burn a timeout and Sanchez was clearly frustrated with Cooper. He seemed to yelling, among other things, “Listen to me!”

Chip Kelly downplayed the sequence at his Monday press conference.

“What they were going to eat for Thanksgiving after the game,” Kelly joked, when asked about what was behind the dust-up. “I mean guys yell at guys all the time; I don’t know why that’s a big deal. You could catch someone yelling at somebody on every play. Not a big deal. I think we weren’t in the right formation and we were trying to get lined up. But Coop wasn’t the guy that wasn’t lined up there. There were other guys that weren’t line up the right way…I think you guys are making way too much out of that.

“There’s guys screaming at each other all the time, that’s why I don’t think it’s a big deal. Listen to my headset. See Tom Brady last night? How was he on the Packers sideline?…

“It’s an emotional game played by emotional players and they are playing at a high level and when guys make mistakes they get not too happy about it. That’s part of the game. I’m surprised at the line of questioning. That’s not the first time people have screamed and yelled at each other out here. It’s not a big deal.”

After the timeout, Sanchez tried to hit Cooper on a crossing route. Cooper, though, was not looking back at the quarterback and the ball bounced off his body and to the turf and the Eagles had to settle for a field goal.

“I think Mark threw it a little early,” Kelly said.

A couple other notes from the press conference:

— Kelly provided an update on Nick Foles.

“He had a checkup on Friday. His clavicle is healing but he hasn’t been cleared to play. He’ll have another exam until he eventually gets cleared because the bone isn’t healed yet.”

Kelly said he didn’t know when the next exam would be.

— The Eagles went 1-of-5 in the red zone against Dallas and are just 5-of-16 over their last three games.

“We didn’t execute well down there. We’re not making any excuses,” said Kelly. “We have to correct that and we have to do better, especially playing against a real good Seattle team.”

— Speaking of the Seahawks’ defense…

“It will be the best secondary that we play. Obviously probably the top corner in the league in Richard Sherman — he has 23 picks since 2011, eight more than any other player in the league. And there’s a reason for that: he’s a smart player, he’s an intelligent player. He’s big, he’s physical, he’s got great ball skills. I think they probably have the top safety in the game in Earl Thomas, and then they have a bunch of other guys that are fast and athletic…They’ve got players at every single position on the defensive side of the ball. There’s a reason they won the Super Bowl last year and there’s a reason they have held the last two teams they’ve played to three points — they have a lot of really talented players over there.”