Bob Brookover: Chip Kelly’s road to NFL greatness behind schedule

ATLANTA Everything has happened so fast since Chip Kelly’s arrival in Philadelphia that you might be surprised to learn he is actually behind schedule.

Kelly, 51, was lauded when he took over as Eagles coach and led the team to a 10-6 record and the NFC East title in his first season. Andy Reid had left him a mess and he quickly cleaned it up. Truth is, however, he was only doing what good NFL coaches do. The great ones, in fact, do even more and after a season-opening 26-24 loss to the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night in the Georgia Dome, there are reasons to still have questions about Kelly.

Most disturbing was how his team slept walk through the opening half, handing the Falcons a 17-point lead that left a slim margin for error in the second half. The Eagles, as it turned out, made far too many mistakes down the stretch, which is not supposed to happen to a team that supposedly has bought into a third-year coach’s culture.

Rest assured, it bothered the coach a lot.

“We didn’t play very well at all in the first half,” Kelly said. “We gave up 10 points inside the last two minutes. I told those guys it was the tale of two halves. We played a lot better in the second half, but we did not come to play in the first half.”

That’s on the coach. The great ones do not let those kinds of things happen.

Consider this: Seven active coaches in the league have won Super Bowl titles and four others have taken their teams to the title game and lost. Ten of the 11 had reached the postseason by their second year as the head coach and eight of the 11 had at least one playoff victory after two seasons.

Kelly has not.

Two coaches New England’s Bill Belichick and Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin won the Super Bowl in their second season. Baltimore’s John Harbaugh had his team in the AFC championship game in his first season and won at least one playoff game in each of his first four seasons before winning the title in his fifth year. Green Bay’s Mike McCarthy had his team in the NFC championship by his second year.

The list of active coaches to win the Super Bowl also includes Tom Coughlin, Sean Payton and Pete Carroll. Reid, John Fox, Jeff Fisher and Lovie Smith are the four active coaches to take their teams to the title game and lose.

With the exception of Fisher and Smith, the coaches listed above all had experienced more success than Kelly through two seasons. Maybe that’s why he decided his team was not as advanced as it needed to be after last year’s 10-6 season that locked the Eagles out of the playoffs.

That’s why when the Eagles lined up for the opener against the Falcons, they had a new quarterback (Sam Bradford), two new running backs (DeMarco Murray and Ryan Mathews) and a total of five new starters on offense.

It was a huge gamble, but his players felt they were equipped to take a step forward even after all the roster turnover.

“I was not worried at all about the pieces coming together,” center Jason Kelce said during the days leading up to the opener. “Maybe that was something that the media or the fans expected. I think we have a good group of coaches, a good group of players, a system and a practice schedule that is set up to make sure that guys get reps.”

Perhaps, but the starters, especially on offense, did not get a lot of reps in the exhibition games and it appeared to be a real problem through the first 30 minutes against the Falcons.

Kelly, in fact, had a lost football team as the Eagles headed to the locker room down 20-3 at the half. The offense had managed just 125 yards and a single Cody Parkey field goal and Bradford had thrown a late interception that led to an Atlanta touchdown.

You spot a team 17 points at halftime, you’re asking for trouble.

To the credit of Kelly, his coaching staff and the players, the Eagles awoke from their first-half slumber and were right back in the game by the end of the third quarter.

Bradford, who has likened running Kelly’s offense to being a point guard, suddenly turned into Mo Cheeks in the second half. The turnaround started with a turnover Walter Thurmond intercepted a Matt Ryan pass and Murray scored his first touchdown as an Eagle on an 8-yard run.

The offense was in total sync on the next possession, which started from the Eagles’ own 5-yard line. A penalty put 97 yards between the Eagles and the end zone, but Bradford completed 9 of 10 passes, including a 5-yard touchdown throw to Murray.

The 17-point deficit was down to three and by the midpoint of the final quarter they had their first lead of the night after Mathews scored from one yard out.

But that out-of-sync sleepwalk through the first half and some costly fourth-quarter mistakes a defensive failure to get off the field on a third-and-15 play and a holding on Kelce that negated a 10-yard gain before Cody Parkey’s missed 44 yard field goal attempt left the Eagles down 26-24 when they took possession with 1:49 remaining.

The Eagles played with fire all night and for the first time in Kelly’s three seasons as the coach, they lost their season opener. Kelly still has a chance to catch the elite coaches, but right now he’s running behind.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Bob Brookover is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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