How The NFL Chewed Chip Kelly Up And Spit Him Out

When Chip Kelly entered the NFL in 2013, many people derided his offense as a "college" or "gimmick" system, with its unconventional no huddle, quarterback read option, plus other aspects of the spread. Kelly pioneered packaged play concepts (those run-pass hybrids) and play call communication techniques like giant signs and coaches doing weird hand signals. Anyone who thought that wouldn't work was wrong. His offense rocked the league in year one, putting up big numbers and carrying a terrible defense to the playoffs.

Many Eagles fans, including myself, enjoyed a victory lap. We taunted the idiotic commentators who questioned Chip's revolution and basked in the glory of his high octane offense. He looked like perhaps the best coach in the NFL, someone we could count on for a tactical advantage for years to come.

But the dirty truth is that winning in the NFL is a result of many, many things, and scheme isn't that high on the list. Actually, scheme may be the least important—because it's the one anybody can copy or subvert. The offensive elements that Chip brought to the league are already being adopted widely. Bill Belichick and Tom Brady borrowed one-word play calls and no huddle from Chip years ago, and both concepts are now widely practiced by teams as old school as the New York Giants. The read option is overtaking the classic I-formation as the trusted standby for numerous teams with mobile quarterbacks. Packaged plays are everywhere. Even his prized sports science may soon be table stakes.

Meanwhile, Kelly has had to make compromises on his core tenets. As it turns out, quarterbacks are not fungible at the NFL level. You can't go from Dennis Dixon to Jeremiah Masoli to Darron Thomas, winning all the way. Chip has struggled to fit indecisive, immobile QBs like Nick Foles and Mark Sanchez and Sam Bradford into his offense, its purest form diluted by the slow feet and damning inconsistencies of each signal caller.

And NFL defensive coordinators are getting paid too. Gone is Chip's surprise factor. These days, the Eagles offense is more likely to be surprised by the defense than the other way around. (Oddly, Chip's offense seems to have shrunk rather than grown over the years.) Recently, for example, defensive line stunts designed by smart defensive coaches like Rob Marinelli and Dan Quinn have crippled Kelly's vaunted interior run game. 

Overall, the scheme playing field is being leveled. And as that advantage fades, other factors become much more important—talent being number one. Acquiring, developing, and retaining talent is 90% of what makes a good football team in the long term. Yes, the less-talented team can luck into a win for any one game. And luck and scheme and hard work can overcome the odds over the course of a season. But if you want to win consistently in a competitive league, you need more.

Just because you're a brilliant engineer doesn't make you a good salesman. Just because you can write doesn't mean you can add. Just because you're a star performer doesn't mean you can manage others. Yet in football, teams have a habit of assuming that their coach can do much more than coach.

Kelly is a smart coach, with a novel and mostly effective scheme. But he is a woeful manager of personnel. I wrote the offseason about the cascade effect of his poor decisions, and the list was long then. But it's getting longer. Sam Bradford looks like a timid check down artist. Byron Maxwell is doing a great Bradley Fletcher impression for $22 million guaranteed. The Evan Mathis cut was questionable from the start, but is appalling now with the current state of the offensive line—a unit whose problems have canceled out any positive effect of a shiny new stable of (expensive) running backs.

In college, Chip didn't have the constraints of the salary cap or the draft or free agency. He was never the best recruiter, but he did fine; from 2010-2012, his recruiting classes ranked top 15 in the country. (At most, Oregon played 3 games a season against opponents who recruited at that level, and went about .500 in those match-ups.) Every year he added another 20-25 new players to a scholarship roster of 85, a game day pool 60% larger than the NFL. If a recruit didn't work out, there was always someone else to take his place, and none of them ever got too old and slow or cost too much money.

Under those conditions, the scheme was just icing on the cake. Kelly maximized the talent advantage he already enjoyed, and thus he won most of the time. But in the NFL, talent margins are too thin to ever make scheme a permanent advantage. Defenders who weren't smart enough or fast enough to disrupt the Oregon offense never made it to the NFL, and the best players are rationed out to professional teams, keeping the league in a constant tumble of parity. Plus, coaches are, for the most part, smarter. They won't sit back and let you call the same three run plays over and over. Oh, and you actually need starting-caliber guards to execute any scheme.

Hopefully Kelly can make some rapid adjustments this week. He needs to add new wrinkles to his play calling and consider benching one or more of his under-performing linemen. He needs to prove that Bradford was worth the major investment the Eagles made for him. The team is only 0-2, and the rest of the NFC East is putrid. There's plenty of time to come back—if he starts right now.

Still, I worry that the NFL has caught up to Chip, and Chip hasn't caught up to the NFL. Opponents are all over his early scheme innovations. But Kelly never figured out the intricacies of running all the aspects of a professional football team, the job he aspired to and finally wrested from Howie Roseman this offseason. The NFL is a lot harder than it looks on Sunday, and maybe we're finally seeing that.

By the Numbers: A Fall From Grace

At the end of Sunday’s game two players were firmly seated on their respective benches. One was Tom Brady, leader of an elite but far from perfect team, who took a rest after amassing a three touchdown lead. The other was DeSean Jackson, talented underachiever on a league-basement team, who was benched for poor play while the Eagles were trying desperately to come back.

There may be a more apt and fair comparison, but to me that distinction illustrates exactly how far the Eagles have fallen. They used to be an elite squad. Not anymore.

Let’s check the numbers:

7 = Times the Patriots entered Eagles territory. They scored 5 touchdowns and went 1 for 2 on field goal attempts on those 7 possessions. That touchdown percentage would be worst in the league for opponent trips to the red zone, let alone crossing the 50 yard line.

2 = Official tackles by Jamar Chaney. There is no doubt that on Sunday Chaney missed more tackles than he made. See the entries under “No need for linebackers” and “fundamentally sound” in the Eagles coaching handbook.

400 = Largely worthless passing yards by Vince Young. That is, however, a single game career high.

40% = Completion percentage on passes targeted at DeSean Jackson. Young’s total would have been even higher if not for Jackson letting two touchdowns and another 75 to 100 yards slip through his fingers. DeSean’s stock has never been lower. It is increasingly likely not only that he’s playing for another team next season but that the Eagles won’t be able to get back much for his services.

10 = Eagles penalties, for 60 yards.

6 = First half carries by LeSean McCoy. The Patriots secondary is bad and the Eagles were able to take advantage of that matchup frequently, so I won’t belabor the “Why won’t you run the ball?” point. But the Patriots were also deficient against the run, no matter what Reid said in his post game press conference. Especially in a game when the goal needed to be keeping Tom Brady off the field, McCoy should have been more of a factor. You can bet that’s what Jim Washburn was heckling Marty Mornhinweg about on the sideline.

.125 = Eagles win percentage at Lincoln Financial Field since Week 16 of last season. Seeing so many fans stream out of the stadium with a quarter left to play can’t have made Jeff Lurie happy.

Photo from Getty.

A Chink in Michael Vick's Armor

I’ve largely focused on the Eagles defense thus far this season. That’s where most of the problems have been. But re-watching the Redskins game last night I came to see a major offensive issue that needs to be addressed over the bye week.

Michael Vick is many things, but he’s not a particularly tall quarterback. In fact, he’s one of the smallest quarterbacks in the league. At only six feet, Vick is no taller than commonly-cited small QBs like Drew Brees and Colt McCoy. This height disadvantage isn’t such a big deal, except in certain circumstances.

Last Sunday the Redskins exploited those situations by bringing all-out blitzes with zero coverage on many third down, fourth down, and red zone plays. Such a defense leaves man-to-man coverage on outside, without any help deep or over the middle. By bringing more blitzers than the offense can hope to stop, the defense tries to force the quarterback to throw too quickly.

The key to beating zero coverage is to burn the defense over the middle with a quick slant or similar route. But on Sunday Vick was unable to complete those passes. 

Part of that may be due to his smaller stature. With rushers coming right up the middle into his face, Vick has to see around them and throw accurately over the top. Other than during the first fourth down conversion, Vick failed to do so.

Whether due to his height or something else, Vick generally has trouble throwing to the center of the field. While Donovan McNabb and Kevin Kolb were more accurate throwing over the middle, Vick is the opposite. That accounts for some of Brent Celek’s decline, but is mostly offset by Vick’s stellar production throwing to his speedy receivers outside the hash marks. Unfortunately, there are some situations where quick, over-the-middle accuracy is what’s needed most.

Those times are mostly blitzes, when Vick has been consistently worse when than other top quarterbacks. Look at Aaron Rodgers’s or Tom Brady’s numbers versus the blitz and you see that their QB rating actually gets improves. Obviously those are the elite players in the game, but it shows what it takes to be that good. Guys like Rodgers, Brady, Peyton Manning, and Drew Brees at worst show minor decline when the defense brings extra rushers.

Vick may be one of the best quarterbacks in other areas, but versus the blitz he just hasn’t shown that kind of ability. And until he improves and/or Marty Morhinweg can scheme around this type of pressure, defenses are going to continue to attack.

Photo from Getty.

Premature to Discuss the End of Vick's Career

Yesterday, Tommy Lawlor wrote that Michael Vick is the “short term guy” at quarterback. He wasn’t making an extensive argument on the subject and I don’t want to mischaracterize his actual point. But I think there’s an interesting question raised there: how long do we expect Michael Vick to be the Eagles quarterback?

Everyone expects that as soon as possible the team will offer Vick a new contract extension. I’m on record saying that they may already have the terms mostly settled. But how long will that contract be? Should the Eagles be looking for a new long term prospect already? Vick will turn 31 this month, after all.

To put it bluntly, I think it’s premature to suggest that Vick is anywhere particularly close to the end of his time in Philadelphia. Look at the career of his predecessor, Donovan McNabb. The Eagles signed McNabb to a contract that would pay him through age 34. They decided to trade him before that final season began, but I don’t think that was because the front office thought he was over-the-hill. Maybe on the downside of his career — but not washed up yet.

If we assume that the Eagles have the same timeline envisioned for Vick, he’s due for at least a three year extension through 2014. For starters, any player that you plan on counting on until 2014 is a long term guy. Short term is a year or two, at least in my book. Once you get to three or four football seasons out, that’s the equivalent of making predictions about 2050.

And yet I think the extension may be for even longer than three years. I actually expect something in the four to five year range. Tom Brady signed an extension for four years at age 33. The Redskins gave 34 year-old McNabb a deal for five years. That’s the going rate. Plus, who’s to say that Vick — with his extra mobility and two years of rest while in jail — isn’t cut out for playing until at least as long as those more stationary quarterbacks?

After Andy Reid surprised McNabb and the rest of the NFL by grabbing Kevin Kolb in 2007, fans are always going to expect that to happen again. But Vick isn’t a short term option. He should be in Philly a long time.

Photo by Getty.

In Andy We Trust? Reid's QB History

Coach and Quarterback success is so often intertwined. How often have we seen a coach essentially luck into a great QB and succeed, then without that player they fail. Big examples would be Bill Belicheck (in Cleveland) without Tom Brady, Mike Shanahan after John Elway. In truth most coaches never find that elusive great QB at all.

Very rare is the coach who can find and tutor multiple QBs, who can win long after the first hall-of-famer is gone. Identifying QBs with the intelligence and skills to succeed is the first hurdle; drafting them is a glorified crapshoot. For every Peyton Manning there’s a Ryan Leaf. For every Donovan McNabb there’s a Tim Couch. Bill Walsh stands out for this quality at the top of my head – he found Joe Montana and Steve Young.

But even after drafting or acquiring these players, you have to be able to mentor them to be NFL quarterbacks. This requires, in some ways, a completely separate skill set. The ability to teach a quarterback and build a team around him is incredibly difficult. Norv Turner has often been credited as a fabulous developer of QBs, having helped Troy Aikman and now Philip Rivers reach stardom. However, there were plenty of other talented players he couldn’t help, such as 49ers 1st overall pick Alex Smith and Redskins 3rd overall pick Heath Shuler.

That combination of talent-finding and talent-nurturing is rare. The question naturally becomes: does Andy Reid have both? The answer to that question shapes your entire view of McNabb or Kolb — because if Andy chooses to switch to Kolb, fans have to decide whether to trust that choice or not. Is Reid just another Shanahan, destined to search blindly for a successor to McNabb and never enjoying the same success? Or is he a proven evaluator and teacher of quarterbacks who knows when to hand the keys to the next guy?

We can get a better handle on this by looking at the quarterbacks Andy has at least helped find or mentor over the years:

• Brett Favre — Andy can’t be cited here for finding Favre, he was a lowly offensive assistant in Green Bay when Ron Wolf acquired Favre. However, Andy was there throughout Favre’s young prime years as offensive line coach and then as quarterbacks coach in 97-98. To some degree Andy helped shape Favre during his greatest years.
• Ty Detmer — Acquired through the draft Andy’s first year as offensive assistant with the Packers. As with Favre, Andy probably worked around and with Ty for the first couple years. Detmer never panned out as a starter, but was an adequate back-up for a number of teams.
• Mark Brunell — Similar situation to Detmer, but was traded and became a Pro Bowl quarterback in Jacksonville.
• Matt Hasselbeck — Here’s where Andy starts being more actively involved as QB coach. Hasselbeck was drafted out of Boston College in the 6th round, with Andy as “the one who worked out Hasselbeck before the draft and pored over his film,” according to the Seattle Times. Reid’s input certainly mattered a great deal, and he helped shape at least the rookie year of Hasselbeck’s NFL transition.
• Koy Detmer — Ty’s brother was in Philly when Andy got there in 1999, but he stayed as the backup to McNabb until 2006. Also perhaps the greatest placekick holder in NFL history.
• Donovan McNabb — The crown jewel of Reid’s QB accomplishments, Andy scouted and trusted him enough to make McNabb his first pick in 1999. Reid then helped McNabb grow into a 6x Pro Bowler and borderline Hall-of-Famer. He has built winners around him for 10 years.
• A.J. Feeley — Andy found him in the 5th round of the 2001 draft. Never a fabulous player, but a great backup who won 4 of 5 starts in 2002, saving the Eagles’ playoff aspirations.
• Andy Hall — 6th round pick in 2004 out of Delaware. Bounced back and forth between practice squad and regular roster before release in 2006.
• Kevin Kolb — Jury’s still out.

Honestly, this list is one of the biggest arguments in favor of letting Andy switch to Kolb. Obviously Reid didn’t play the largest role with all of these players, but overall it seems like he got the most out of the ones he worked with. Aside from minor pick Hall, Reid hasn’t drafted anyone who hasn’t in some way “panned out” — relative to their pick. That alone is a fabulous sign that he can diagnose talent. And his work with other low-round picks like Hasselbeck and Feeley that turned them into real NFL players is impressive. Finally, there’s the fact that his one previous high pick on a QB was spot on.

Andy’s history suggests that he may one of a few coaches who can both find and mentor great QB talent. That’s not something we should overlook, although we often do. If that history is any guide, Kolb ought to be a fine QB.