Kelce sees return of familiar swagger
PHILADELPHIA >> Until someone else wears a puffy, glittery Mummers hat in a parade, grabs a microphone, scolds critics, sings, shouts and rejoices the way he did last February, Jason Kelce will have one important responsibility. The Eagles’ center shall decide when, where and how to behave like a champion.
Sunday in Chicago, where the Eagles will play against the Bears, with their championship in the balance? That would be a good place to show some of that familiar swagger … if the Eagles haven’t begun to recover that already.
“It’s definitely better,” Kelce said Thursday, after practice at the NovaCare Complex. “Any time you’re winning, you get momentum. Any time you are winning, and I love the phrase that Stout (offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland) uses, execution fuels emotion. Any time you are out there and you are playing well, you are going to be feeling good.
“That’s why we felt so good last year.” From beginning to end last year, the Eagles executed, regularly triumphing by lopsided scores, winning 13 games and the NFC East, then rolling to a world championship. But they were tested in their encore, made to play without Carson Wentz for the first two games and the last three, enduring massive injuries in their secondary, and forced to scramble just to win a wild-card spot.
But now that they are in, don’t tell them they are undeserving.
“I know everybody here talks about leadership and stuff like that,” Kelce said. “All that is important. But the bottom line is, when you’re out there and you’re executing and performing well, that’s naturally going to come. And that’s what you are seeing more of in this team now.”
While swagger has some value, Kelce stressed it is not a guarantee of anything. Nor does he believe that the Eagles’ Super Bowl experience will matter much Sunday, once the collisions begin in Soldier Field.
“Doesn’t mean anything,” Kelce warned, almost intercepting a question. Even when pressed, he denied that playoff experience, of which the Eagles have plenty and the Bears are about to acquire, will matter.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so. The better team that goes out there and plays will win the game. I’m not a big believer in experience and whatnot. I do know that if we go out there and we execute and do what we have been coached to do, if we go out the way we have been playing the last few weeks, we will put ourselves in position to win the game.
“So that’s what it comes down to. I am not at all focused on which team is more experienced, or really anything to do with Chicago, to tell you the truth. This has to do with us and how we prepare and how we execute. And that’s what is going to help us be successful on Sunday.”
Since they are on a three-game winning streak, the Eagles clearly have been executing better than they were in November. That’s when Kelce infamously questioned their accountability, using a form of that very word three times in one comment.
“I didn’t call anybody out,” Kelce said. “‘Accountability’ was the wrong word to use then. I said it after I said that. It was never an accountability thing. It was just execution. I think it was just guys getting the job done. With ‘accountability’ you get the idea that guys aren’t doing everything they can. I don’t think that was ever an issue that we had here. But across the board, all you saw early on was a lack of execution. We had a tremendous amount of penalties early on that killed drives. We had dropped passes, the offensive line not being on the same page. You can go down the list. It goes across all the position groups. It was more an answer to why we were struggling. It was never meant as a ‘calling out.’” But did it help?
“No,” Kelce said. “That happening in the media had zero impact in what led to this team turning around. I think the day-in, day-out communication with one another played a much bigger role.
“Things got ironed out,” he added. “They are still getting ironed out. I don’t think we were ever as bad as maybe it’s been led on to believe. Outside of the one Saints game, which was just an abysmal performance, we have been in pretty much all these football games. And the fact is we have corrected these things that we were doing wrong. We’ve gotten better. We’ve gotten more consistent. But I don’t think me saying anything in front of a camera had anything to do with that. I think that us working every single day, the coaches continuing to coach and the players playing better all led to this.”
It led to the Eagles looking like the Eagles again.
“We’ve been playing our best ball right now, late in the season,” Fletcher Cox said. “Guys have been stepping up, whether it is special teams, offense, defense. Winning gives teams that extra edge. And it gives teams more swagger going into the playoffs.”
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NOTES >> Michael Bennett (foot), Sidney Jones (hamstring), D.J. Alexander (hamstring) and Wentz (back) did not practice Thursday . ... Cox (knee), Avonte Maddox (oblique), Jason Peters (quadriceps), Isaac Seumalo (chest), Wendell Smallwood (hand) and Mike Wallace (ankle) were limited in their workouts. Nick Foles (ribs) and Kelce (knee) practiced fully.