Eagles fans can hardly believe the on-field results this season, but coach Chip Kelly hasn't lost faith in the master plan.
"It didn't go our way, but I don't think we're a bad football team," Kelly said Monday, per Reuben Frank of CSN Philly. "Not by any stretch."
The case for Kelly is simple: This was an off-kilter campaign after he produced a pair of 10-6 seasons over his first two years in the NFL.
From another angle, since starting 9-3 last season, Kelly's club is just 7-12, with only five teams in the NFL sporting a worse record than Philly in 2015.
The swoon is concerning because these Eagles were hand-picked by Kelly, from underwhelming quarterback Sam Bradford to DeMarco Murray, last year's Offensive Player of the Year who has served as an odd fit from the start. Kelly also is responsible for dispatching talents like LeSean McCoy and DeSean Jackson, the latter who fried Philly in Saturday's uneven loss to the Redskins.
Losing five of their last seven, Philly's offense is a far cry from the high-speed whirlwind Eagles fans were promised, while the defense is a ghostship. The team has given up 38-plus points in three of their past five games while losing tilts by 31, 28, 23, 14, 11 and 10 points.
"I think we're not consistent, but we need to be consistent, and I don't think we've done a good enough job as coaches to put them in position to make plays," Kelly said. "But I don't think we need to revamp this entire group of guys. Because I think we have some really, really good guys."
The larger question is whether Kelly will be one of those guys come next season. We expect he will, but the Eagles under his watch have been a high-drama operation, and we wouldn't be stunned if the former Oregon wizard decided to move on or even green-light a trade to Tennessee, where Kelly would be reunited with quarterback Marcus Mariota.
