Chip Kelly Introducing The Eagles To His Uptempo Style Of Practices

Eagles head coach Chip Kelly is turning the football world upside down by changing the way his team practices.  He’s got the Eagles working on game time tempo football and nothing else.

I think he’s going to get positive results because football is played primarily with muscle memory in much the same way a soldier or airplane pilot performs their tasks automatically from their subconscious intelligence because they don’t have time to cognitively think through what they must do.

Football is played at this area of the brain and it must be done instinctively and automatically.  Again you don’t have time to cognitively think through each play, you just react.  You are trained as an athlete in much the same way a soldier, policeman, doctors and nurses.

You can bet that the policemen, doctors and nurses up in Boston went in that mode when they were reacting the bombing at the Boston Marathon. This is how Kelly and his staff are working the Eagles.  He believes in two speeds during practice.  There’s full speed and teach speed during the workouts.  When they get into the team drills, he only wants full speed.

“If you’re going to do something else at any other speed, then why do it?” Kelly said to the media yesterday.

Each play during and NFL game lasts about four of five seconds.  The teams go back to the huddle and then play for five seconds again at their highest speed.  Then they do it again.  And again.  This is the way football is played.  The game consists of short bursts for four or five seconds.  Kelly wants the practices focused on preparing specifically for performing at the highest level for those four or five seconds.

“We’re not doing it just for the sake of doing it,” Kelly said. “We’re doing it because to me, and philosophically, it’s been proven that it helps you win. I think it’s a real efficient way to practice. We practice a lot shorter than other teams. We get our work done in a quicker amount of time. And that’s part of the whole process. Does that mean that we’re going to play in games like that? No. We certainly understand that, but it’s a tool in our toolbox that if we have to dial it up, we feel pretty comfortable in doing it.”

Kelly and his staff want the players training their muscles to play fast.  He wants them to think fast, react fast and ultimately get used to playing the game at a higher speed.  He wants the practices to be a carbon copy of the games and stress playing the game faster because speed kills in the NFL and every other level of football.

You don’t run any slow or methodical plays in the NFL.  Everything is done at your highest speed and that’s the way Kelly and his staff push the players to practice, so that they’ve trained their minds and bodies for game tempo.

“We segment our practices in a certain manner,” he explained. “If we’re going to have a full-speed team period, then the next period after that is a teach period because we know we just can’t continue to go for 35 minutes straight of all team.

“Even though you change what the situation is, there still needs to be a break in there. We want our guys to understand to play at a game tempo, we have to kind of gear it like game tempo. Really, it’s short bursts, get in and get out, get your work done, and then let’s go back and teach mode.”

Concerning his offense, he’s working on teaching them to execute a small number of plays rather trying to download the entire playbook on them in this first series of workouts.  It’s quality over quantity right now for Kelly and his crew.

“It’s not how much offense we get in at this point in time, because again, we’re not playing a game, but it’s can we get them out there so they can execute?” he said. “We’re not going to overload them so that we’re not getting any plays run both offensively and defensively. We’re giving them enough where they can execute, enough where we can vary and handle the situations that we’re in, but not so much that we’ve just overloaded ourselves.”