What Went Wrong: The 2014 Sins Of Chip Kelly

The 2014 season will be forever remembered as one that the Philadelphia Eagles were given an opportunity to make a playoff run in a shaky conference, but squandered the opportunity away.

What was supposed to be another step forward in a new era proved to be a gut-wrenching step back, one that I ultimately pin responsibility on the shoulders of head coach Chip Kelly who was the ringleader in this botched operation.

Critical, recurring flaws that plagued the team throughout the year eventually caught up to them. The writing on the wall was there all along, but the Eagles managed to hide it behind the cheap coat of paint that was their 9-3 start. Now that the wheels have fallen off and this team has been exposed for what it is, let’s take a look and examine the mistakes made by the head coach that would ultimately lead the team down the path it took.

1. The Release of DeSean Jackson

There’s no acceptable positive spin that anyone can put on this one.

Kelly straight up botched the handling of DeSean Jackson.

Coming off of his best season to date, one in which he put up over 1,300 yards and nine touchdowns, Kelly couldn’t handle another season of managing DeSean’s personality off the field. Consequences be damned, Chip made it clear to the front office that he didn’t want Jackson back for another season. The Eagles tried to trade him, but were unable to find a club that wanted to take on his huge contract, which ultimately led the team to just releasing the star receiver and receiving no compensation of any kind.

Kelly’s defenders will point to the success of Jeremy Maclin this year and say that his production covered for the loss of DeSean, but the reality is that this move hurt regardless of what Maclin and the other receivers did or didn’t do this year. An offense with Jackson, Maclin, Jordan Matthews, LeSean McCoy, Darren Sproles, Zach Ertz and the others would have been completely devastating for any defense that had the misfortune of going against them. Just imagine how much better this offense could have been if the head coach could have sucked it up and dealt with DeSean for another year.

As if removing 1,300 yards and nine touchdowns and one of the league’s top vertical threats from your offense wasn’t bad enough, Kelly gave Jackson free reign to sign with whatever team he liked. DeSean would sign on with the Washington Redskins, and play a significant role in Washington’s late season upset of the Eagles, putting up 126 yards, including several 50+ yard receptions that led to points for the Redskins.

Kelly’s going to be in for a rude awakening if he thinks that this is the last time he’ll have to manage difficult personalities. This is the NFL, not college. You’re managing grown men with enormous egos, Chip. You’re not coaching kids fresh out of high school anymore. You can’t keep cutting your stars any time you get a guy who doesn’t buy in 100%.

By releasing Jackson, Kelly denied his offense a chance to be truly elite, and watched the same player he let go come back and play a role in preventing this team from making the playoffs in the final weeks of the regular season.

2. Under-utilizing Key Players

One element of the Eagles’ offense that was both baffling and inexcusable was how certain players were utilized throughout the season.

Specifically, I’m talking about Darren Sproles and Zach Ertz.

Sproles and Ertz are two of this offense’s most electric weapons, after Jeremy Maclin and LeSean McCoy, these two have the most gamebreaking ability of any of the Eagles’ weapons.

And both were criminally underused throughout the season.

We saw early on what kind of a game-changer Darren Sproles was. In the beginning of the season, he was the spark that the offense needed to get going against both the Jaguars and Colts. The former Saint touched the ball 26 times, gaining well over 200 yards and scored two touchdowns in those two performances, helping the Eagles avoid potentially starting 0-2.

After that, Chip Kelly seemed to forget about him, and he became more of a role player and less of a focal point in the attack. Sproles never gained more than 50 total offensive yards in a game in two more games for the rest of the year. After averaging more than five receptions in the first two games, Sproles had just two games where he caught more than three balls in a game.

During the team’s brutal three-game losing streak that eliminated them from contention, Sproles was given just four carries and no receptions against the Seahawks, and three carries and two receptions against the Cowboys. Where were wheel routes, screens, and hitches that take advantage of Sproles’ skillset? How could a guy show explosive become such a non-factor, especially in a year where LeSean McCoy struggled so heavily to be effective at times?

Its a very similar story for tight end Zach Ertz.

Just like Sproles, Ertz began the year with a bang, picking up 77 yards and a touchdown against the Jaguars, and hauling in six passes for 86 yards against the Colts. And then for the rest of the season, Ertz saw his snap count decline and was only given cameo appearances here and there until he was finally given a major role in the gameplan against the Redskins where he went off for 15 catches and over 100 yards.

Ertz’s lack of use is an even bigger crime than Sproles. Here you have an excellent young pass catcher just oozing with ability. Anytime he’s given the opportunity, he’s been able to go out and make a difference as a receiver. And yet, the supposed offensive genius of a head coach couldn’t figure out how to take advantage of his talents and really unleash him in a way that would help this offense.

Throughout the season, Kelly would trot out the lame excuse Ertz wasn’t as good a blocker as Brent Celek, which led to his lack of snaps. I’m sorry, but Ertz is just too much of a strength as a receiver to not be involved in this attack regularly. And by the way, the lack of tight end use under Chip isn’t anything new…last year when the offensive line was healthy and at its peak, we were waiting all year for Kelly to unleash some lethal double-tight end attacks with some combination of Celek/Ertz/Casey, and it just never happened.

Just in general this season, there was a severe lack of creativity with the offense. One of Kelly’s claims to fame was that he’s supposed to a bright and bold guy that’s always innovating and coming up with new schemes and tricks. The offense that I saw throughout the year just seemed very vanilla and predictable to me.

3. Struggles Against Quality Opponents

This is one that I’ve talked about throughout the season, but its worth repeating.

Chip Kelly has not fared well against quality opponents in his first two seasons.

This year, Kelly went just 2-5 against teams above the .500 mark. They managed to squeak by against the Colts on Monday night early in the season, and had Indy called a better game in the fourth quarter, they might have easily been 1-6 on the year instead. Kelly failed to come up with wins on the road early in the year against the 49ers and Cardinals. His team was blown away with ease by the Green Bay Packers. Then with everything to play for at the end of the year, they folded like lawn chairs at home against the Seattle Seahawks and Dallas Cowboys with their season on the line.

Its cute that Chip can run up the score against the Titans, Panthers and Giants, but if you can’t step up and win games against the teams you’ll be in competition with for playoff positions, how good can you really be?

4. Failure To Make Key Adjustments

When its clear that some part of your football team is struggling mightily and needs to be corrected, the head coach has got to be able to step in and at least try something to remedy the situation.

This is another aspect that Kelly failed miserably with two key aspects of this team: the cornerbacks and the amount of turnovers produced by the offense.

Let’s start with the corners.

Throughout the year, Kelly had been pressed by media about why he would continue to stick with Cary Williams and Bradley Fletcher as his corners and not think about giving more snaps to Brandon Boykin or Nolan Carroll. Chip stood by and watched Billy Davis play his part in destroying this team’s playoff hopes by allowing the penalty machine (Williams) and burnt toast (Fletcher) struggle while Boykin and Carroll sat on the bench. This problem really came back to bite the Eagles in Week 16.

After watching Fletcher get obliterated by Dez Bryant the previous week, it was painfully clear that a change needed to be made. Regardless of whatever insignificant consequences it would have had for the nickel and dime packages, after the Dallas game it was clearly time to move on from Bradley Fletcher. And Chip once again stood by and did nothing while Davis rolled Fletcher out there with his starters once again to get burned multiple times by DeSean Jackson. I don’t want to hear that it was Billy Davis’ choice to make. This is Chip’s operation. Its his responsibility to step in for the good of the team and do what must be done.

This team had also been shooting itself in the foot with turnovers all season. They led the league in the unfortunate category, and by the time the season ended, this team looked no better protecting the football than they did back in August in the preseason. All Chip would say week to week is that he didn’t have an answer for the turnovers. He would explain that he certainly wasn’t coaching his guys to come out and make mistakes, but it was something that they had to get under control.

Well Chip, you might not have been coaching them to turn the ball over. But you apparently didn’t coach them to protect the ball either. Whatever Kelly was telling and emphasizing to this team every week clearly wasn’t working. Over the months that this season took place, the Eagles kept serving up turnovers on a silver platter, and never got any better at protecting the ball. Once again, a huge part of the blame for this falls on the shoulders of the man overseeing the operation.

5. Lack Of Creativity/Innovation

When I watched the Eagles offense this year, I never felt like this team was a step ahead of opposing defenses like they were last year.

Throughout the year, I rarely saw any unique or creative play design. I honestly felt like I was watching the same 15-20 plays over and over again.

I don’t want to hear that Kelly was limited with what he could do by his quarterback. Chip was hired because he’s supposedly this bright, innovative offensive mind that is always cooking up new schemes and formations to allow him to take advantage of the skillsets of his players. And all he could do with Sanchez was a bunch of vanilla, dink-and-dunk plays, very rarely making any kind of effort to stretch the field? What happened to “Big Balls” Kelly? What happened to the guy that wasn’t afraid to take chances? Instead of dictating the game to opposing defenses, he allowed defenses to dictate what he could do.

We rarely saw any dual running back formations involving both LeSean McCoy and Darren Sproles, which I think was such a wasted opportunity. The potential for a number of different effective run/pass/misdirection with those two in the game at once was enormous, and Kelly allowed said potential to go untapped.

After the loss to the Seahawks, Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman stated that this was a “basic offense”. I don’t disagree with him in the least.