Chip Kelly: Jets Win Was ‘Gritty’

It wasn’t pretty, Chip Kelly explained, but the Eagles still picked up their first win of the season against the Jets.

“I thought it was gritty,” Kelly said. “We knew going in that this was going to be one of this kind of, to use a boxing analogy, two guys are going to stand in the middle of the ring and start swinging at each other, and that’s what happened.”

Despite totaling less than 300 yards on offense and scoring zero points after halftime, Kelly’s team did enough in the first two quarters to hold off the Jets for a 24-17 victory.

With a win under the belt for this revamped Eagles team, Kelly said talking to his guys at practice on Tuesday will be much easier than if they had lost in East Rutherford. Still, the mentality doesn’t change with his team, win or lose.

“Like everything, it’s got to be the same mentality, that is you’ve got to make your corrections on Tuesday, and then you’ve got to go,” Kelly said, “because what happened the week before, in this league, sometimes doesn’t have a real big impact on the next week. Every week’s going to be kind of a street fight, and you’ve got to be prepared.”

Here are some highlights from Kelly’s press conference after the win:

— When asked about Jordan Hicks and Eric Rowe, who combined for three turnovers in the win:

“We were really excited about Jordan when we got him, and we talked about him being a third-down linebacker,” Kelly said. “I think you’re starting to see that he’s got great coverage skills, and there’s a calmness to Jordan. He’s got real good awareness out there. So I don’t think anything’s too big for him. He obviously made a really big catch on the tip ball, I think it was Brandon Bair.

“Eric I thought had really good coverage at times,” he continued. “[He] broke up one on our sideline, and then come up with the pick on our sideline. So it was good to see the two of those guys contribute to the victory on the defensive side.”

— On the Eagles’ ability to limit offensive turnovers against a defense that entered with 10 takeaways in its first two games:

“It’s really what we talked about was creating turnovers on our side of the ball,” Kelly said. “It’s been something that we’ve talked about since last April, which is we turned the ball over a little too much last year offensively, and we’ve got to create more on the defensive side. Obviously, it had a huge impact on the game today.”

— On what he saw from Sam Bradford, who finished the game 14-for-28 for 118 yards and a touchdown:

“I thought Sam did a nice job considering what they brought,” Kelly said. “They can bring a rush unlike any team we played; they bring seven, they’re going to play zero-man behind it. I think a few of those drops, all of those guys would like back.”

— Kelly said Ryan Mathews’ running style complimented what the Eagles were trying to do against the Jets, and then elaborated on what he meant:

“He’s a real decisive, kind of one-cut runner,” Kelly said. “He stuck his foot in the ground and kind of goes, and you’re going to have to run through some arm tackles at times, and he did. He’s got some size to go along with his explosion, and there were times where guys are kind of running off of tackles, and it’s not a make-you-miss thing, it’s you’ve got to be physical, and I thought he was really physical in there running the football.”

— On the play of the team’s defense as a whole:

“I think our defense played really, really well,” Kelly said. “They created a lot of turnovers over there. We knew what they were going to do. There’s a lot of empty sets that they run, trying to figure out if you’re in man or zone. If you’re in man, [Brandon] Marshall’s such a big target that it’s a difficult matchup at times.

“And [Ryan Fitzpatrick] is so smart that he gets the ball out quick so the rush doesn’t really get to him. So I thought our defense, especially some of the young guys that played, really stepped up today.”