What They’re Saying About The Eagles

Here’s what the media are saying about the Eagles this week:

MMQB’s Peter King is surprised by the Eagles’ ineptitude this season, but he doesn’t think Chip Kelly will be moving on next year.

When he was at Oregon, it wasn’t as if [Kelly] was necessarily in the place where he could see himself coaching forever. When he got the Eagles’ job, I thought part of it was for the challenge of competing on a level playing field, not one where the corporate and alumni world can make such a difference in winning and losing.

One more observation: Had [Nick] Saban signed Drew Brees in 2006 instead of listening to team medics who told him Brees’ shoulder surgery would make that season iffy for the quarterback, there’s a good chance the Dolphins would have at least one Super Bowl in the last decade and Saban would still be in Miami. And if Sam Bradford had worked out and played great—there is still time, but Bradford hasn’t played well enough to erase the doubts people had on him before the March trade to Philadelphia—these questions about Kelly’s future would be moot.

Gut feeling: Unless Jeffrey Lurie gets Tennessee’s first-round pick for Kelly, and Kelly’s serious about re-starting his NFL life in Tennessee next year (with his former Oregon QB, Marcus Mariota), Kelly stays. With Lurie’s full support.

Kelly’s changes — and, more importantly, his failures — have ruffled the feathers of Eagles fans in Philadelphia, writes USA Today’s Lorenzo Reyes.

The holiday weekend has ended, but the sting of Thanksgiving doesn’t sit any easier. The fans in this city are back at work and still stewing.

The Detroit Lions pounded the Eagles to the tune of 45-14, giving Philadelphia its third loss in a row and the latest embarrassing failure in what has been an incredibly frustrating season.

“Do I have faith in Chip Kelly? Hell no,” said Lauren Shaye, a bartender at the Wrap Shack in Rittenhouse Square. “He messed this team up. He hasn’t proven that any decision he has made is working or is beneficial to this team. There’s no camaraderie between the team and the coaches. Something is not right. He has to go.”

This Eagles team should have dominated the NFC East, writes ESPN’s Phil Sheridan. Instead, a prime opportunity slipped through their hands.

It may come down to Washington and New York for the division title, but that’s not because either team has been particularly good. It is because the Eagles and Cowboys have been epic disappointments.

One of those teams has an excuse. Injuries have cost Dallas the services of quarterback Tony Romo for most of the season. Wide receiver Dez Bryant was also out for a long stretch. While that lets Dallas off the hook a bit, it does nothing but make the Eagles’ failure this season look even worse.

Their three-game losing streak — against Miami, Tampa Bay and Detroit — was only the most dramatic (and most recent) chapter in the Eagles’ story. The reality is, this Eagles team has been inexcusably out of sync since the beginning of the regular season.

 

 

Mike Sando of ESPN.com lists the Eagles as one of the teams that might make sense as a landing spot for Colin Kaepernick.

“I think [the Niners] are catering to a traditional quarterback style with their throws, with their plays,” one personnel director said. “It is really crazy because they paid him all that money. When Kaepernick was having success, they were doing the read-option, they were rolling him out, he was doing stuff like that. He has a strong arm and he is not terribly accurate, but when he had that threat of running, he was much better.”…

Before landing on the bench and injured reserve this season, Kaepernick was running the ball about as frequently as he had in the past. (See chart above.) His zone-read rushing attempts also had not fallen sharply. But with nearly all the 49ers’ running backs injured, their offensive line (including tight ends) diminished and their defensive safety net gone, playing quarterback certainly became tougher for an unpolished passer in a new system. Other quarterbacks, including Joe Flacco this season, have had issues when their support systems have fallen apart.

The surest way for Kaepernick to succeed again is for his 2016 team to recreate some of the conditions that existed for him previously. That means placing the quarterback in an offense with a ground game strong enough to compromise what opposing defenses can do to slow down a dual-threat quarterback.

Mike Florio of PFT with some thoughts on Pete Morelli’s crew being reassigned from the Sunday night game between the Colts and Steelers to Eagles-Patriots after making mistakes the week prior.

In confirming the PFT report that referee Pete Morelli’s crew has been removed from Sunday night’s game between the Colts and Steelers, the Associated Press also reports that Morelli and crew have been reassigned to the game between the Eagles and Patriots.

The move comes at a time when plenty of Patriots fans have become convinced that the NFL and/or the referees are out to get the Patriots, presumably for #DeflateGate. Fueling the theory is, among other things, a regional Sports Illustrated cover featuring Broncos quarterback Brock Osweiler throwing a pass in the foreground — and Patriots defensive lineman Dominique Easley being blatantly held in the background.

 

Sports Illustrated’s Eric Single writes about fringe players who spend their NFL careers being cut and re-signed by the same team, including Julian Vandervelde.

Free-agent offensive lineman Julian Vandervelde has those steps committed to memory, at least when it comes to the Eagles, who have released him three times since the beginning of September and have signed and cut him six times each in total since they drafted him with the 30th pick of the fifth round (No. 161) in 2011.

Aside from a one-month stint in 2012 with the Buccaneers (who in that span signed him, released him two days later, added him to their practice squad and dropped him from their practice squad), Philadelphia is the only franchise Vandervelde knows, accounting for all 16 regular-season games he’s played in and 14 of the 18 transactions that outline the stop-start-repeat roadmap of his five years as a pro.