Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Kelly: No infighting among Eagles
Kelly insists there’s no in-fighting
PHILADELPHIA >> With a Thanksgiving game looming in Detroit, the last thing Chip Kelly needed to do Monday was address the quarrel quarterback Mark Sanchez started Sunday with running back Darren Sproles. Kelly did it anyway. Rewind to Sunday and an animated Sanchez accused Sproles of breaking off his route on a screen pass that Bucs linebacker Lavonte David returned 20 yards for the final points in a 45-17 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Sproles returned the animation and then some. Instead of pointing at his teammate he could have held up three fingers — one for each of the picks the Sanchize launched.
“That’s just two guys, two very competitive guys in Darren and Mark and they’ve patched it up,” Kelly said. “I think they’re both frustrated, but I’m not worried about that overall as a team. I think that happens and you look at it all the time.”
Eagles players shied away from taking sides, and understandably so. Even an ounce of divisiveness could impact the faltering Eagles (4-6), who have lost three of their last four games. The Lions (3-7) have won two straight games.
“It’s not like it was a real fight,” one veteran said. “It was more a disagreement. I don’t
think they meant anything by it.”
Kelly went behind his applicable poetic license to compare the disagreement to a Tom Brady moment with wide receiver Julian Edelman. To get yourself in the mood, picture Kelly in a team hoodie.
“You know it’s funny, when you win and that happens everybody says those two guys are really competitive,” Kelly said. “When Tom Brady yells at Julian Edelman and they win the game it’s ‘what a competitor the quarterback is.’ If it happens when you’re losing, it’s in-fighting. But it was an isolated incident between two highly competitive players and there’s nothing else that came of it.”
How the New England Patriots, who are 9-0, could become part of the narrative with a free-falling team such as the Eagles is another story for another day.
At any rate, Kelly and his
players are feeling the heat. Keeping the struggling squad together won’t be easy. The Eagles cannot keep themselves from making the same mistakes. It’s pathetic and annoying, much like a scratched record skipping on an old phonograph.
Wide receiver Josh Huff, who played for Kelly at Oregon, can appreciate the challenge ahead of the Eagles’ staff.
“We’ve been playing poorly as players,” Huff said. “They do an excellent job putting the game plan together and going at it like that and we work hard throughout the week but, come the game, it’s not there for us. I mean offensively it’s stagnant. And we’re putting pressure on our defense and special teams, etcetera. We’ve just got to play smarter, move forward and stay close-knit as we’ve been staying and just focus on us and worry about us and worry about the Eagles and keep our heads down and keep fighting.”
Kelly, as you would expect, has seen no sign of his players giving up. That’s different
than the reaction of Philly fans, a chunk of which are upset with the results from his roster rebuild.
“So we lost a football game,” Kelly said. “I don’t think it’s time to say, ‘Hey, we don’t believe this is this.’ We got outplayed. We got outcoached. We didn’t do a good job coaching in that football game and that’s what it is. But that’s all it is and we need to move forward. It’s not, ‘we need to change, set up our day’ or do anything like that. I think we lost a game to a better team. We were outcoached. We’re going to move on and get ready to play Detroit.”
Finally, Kelly was irritated when asked if he’d considered any lineup changes the past few weeks. After a response of no, he was told that doing the same thing over and over is the definition of insanity.
“We lost two games,” Kelly said. “I mean, I think sometimes people panic and throw the baby out with the bath water. I think we have a really good football team and I’m very confident in these football players.”