Donovan McNabb sounds skeptical of Chip Kelly’s offense

Posted by Michael David Smith on September 19, 2013, 1:25 PM EDT

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Donovan McNabb lasted 11 seasons in Philadelphia. He sounds skeptical that the new offense being ushered in by new Eagles coach Chip Kelly can last as long.

McNabb told CSNPhilly.com that the read option is “just a fad,” and he thinks the Eagles are going to struggle to keep up with Kelly’s fast-paced attack all season.

“I don’t know if any offensive player would want to run 90 plays in a game. If you’re running 90 plays in a game, that means your defense is pretty awful and you’re running entirely too many plays,” McNabb said. “At Oregon, [Kelly] may have ran 75 plays in a game, but you’re not going to run 85, 90, not in the NFL, and teams and defensive coordinators are a lot better than what you’re going to see in college.”

McNabb acknowledged that the Eagles’ offense has looked good so far, but he believes it’s also important to be able to play ball control offense, especially with a lead.

“I tip my hat off to what they’ve been doing the first two weeks, but there comes a time if you’re up by 14, up by 21, maybe with about 11, 10 minutes to go, it’s time to go into a mode where you’re trying eat up some clock,” McNabb said. “You can’t continue to run that fast-paced offense because it continues to run down not only their defense, but it wears your offense down, too.”

There’s already been some talk that Eagles quarterback Michael Vick won’t be able to withstand a 16-game season in Kelly’s offense, and McNabb says those concerns should extend beyond just Vick.

“It’s not so much Mike, I think it’s all the guys,” McNabb said. “You worry about the depth, you’re worried about the injuries and long-term. Right now, everything looks great, but I’m just worried as this thing continues, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, if guys get hurt, who’s going to step in? What guys do you have to fill in in these key roles?”

Those are questions worth asking. Even if some Eagles fans won’t appreciate McNabb being the one to ask them.

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Eagles players are still slowing down the Chip Kelly offense

Posted by Mike Florio on September 18, 2013, 5:17 PM EDT

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As Eagles coach Chip Kelly tries to maximize the performance of his no-huddle, hurry-up offense, he needs maximum cooperation from his players.

So far, he’s not getting it.

Before Sunday’s unexpected loss to the Chargers, Sal Paolantonio of ESPN reported that Kelly has instructed his players not to leave the ball on the ground after a play but to hand it to an official.  During Sunday’s game, Kelly’s players consistently left the ball on the ground.

The biggest culprit was running back LeSean McCoy.  Based on a review of the full game broadcast, McCoy left the ball on the ground at least 10 times.

At one point in the second quarter, McCoy flipped the ball to the officials after a play.  Soon after that, he left it on the ground, stopped, retrieved it, and gave it to the officials.

If the change was the result of being reminded about it on the sidelines after consistently failing to give the ball to the officials during the first quarter, it didn’t stick.  He quickly resorted to leaving the ball on the ground after a play.

Others who left the ball on the ground at least once include running back Bryce Brown, receiver DeSean Jackson, quarterback Mike Vick, and receiver Jason Avant.

While it doesn’t create a major delay, every second counts in Kelly’s go-go offense.  And for Kelly, who wants the system to run a certain way, it has to be maddening that the guys aren’t doing what they expressly have been told to do.

It’s unclear when they were first told to do it this way.  Either Kelly has been harping on it throughout the offseason program, training camp, and the preseason and they continue to ignore him, or he has just realized only recently that time was being wasted by leaving the ball on the ground instead of getting it in an official’s hands.

Regardless, the Eagles could be getting even more plays called if the players start doing what Kelly wants them to do.

It’s unclear how many more snaps they would have had on Sunday against the Chargers.  As it stands, Philly had only 58.  San Diego had 79 plays from scrimmage, despite often draining the play clock in a no-huddle approach while quarterback Philip Rivers made changes based on the pre-snap look.

The Chargers ended up having the ball more than 40 minutes, too.  Kelly has said that he’s not concerned about a 40-20 split, as long as the Eagles get their snaps in.  On Sunday, it was less like the UCLA game Kelly mentioned in August and more like the far bigger NFL game in which the Buffalo K-gun offense was stymied both in time of possession and snaps by a grind-it-out Giants team.

While the Chargers did much more throwing than grinding on Sunday in Philly, they came up with an approach that others surely will copy in the coming weeks.

Starting on Thursday night, when the Chiefs and Andy Reid come to town.

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Freeney doesn’t think quarterbacks will survive in Eagles offense

Posted by Mike Florio on September 19, 2013, 10:36 AM EDT

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Eagles quarterback Mike Vick had a hard time staying healthy in Andy Reid’s offense.  Vick could have an even harder time staying healthy in Chip Kelly’s offense.

That was Chargers linebacker Dwight Freeney’s biggest takeaway after facing the Eagles on Sunday.

“The problem is with that offense, to be honest with you, is the quarterback position and the pounding the quarterback
takes with that and it’s not college anymore,” Freeney tells Erik Kuselias in an interview to be aired Thursday on NBCSN’s Pro Football Talk.   “And it’s going to be very interesting to see if a team can actually have a starting quarterback or backup quarterback last through the whole entire year with this type of athlete — not a college athlete — you’re talking about a guy who may be 300 pounds, running a 4.8-whatever it is, hitting your quarterback every time he carries out a fake, whether he has the ball or not. Will the quarterback to be able to last the whole year? That’s the question.”

In Freeney’s opinion, the answer to that question will be no.

“They don’t really stress protection,” Freeney said. “They stress more or less, you know what, we’re going to confuse, this, that and the other.”

And they’re always going to move fast. Very fast. So fast that a nine-play drive that tied Sunday’s game against the Chargers late took only 80 seconds off the clock — and left 111 for the Chargers to drive down the field and win it.

But it’s still not as fast as Kelly would like. If the Eagles can cram in more plays, and if Vick and receiver DeSean Jackson can connect on a few more long throws, the man who threw for 428 yards on 58 snaps against San Diego could throw for over 600 yards.

If he can remain in one piece.

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