[NFL Preview] The 2015 Philadelphia Eagles Brush Their Shoulders Off, Look Us Straight in the Eye, & Say ‘WE GOT THIS’.
Philadelphia made its final roster cuts yesterday, the NFL season starts Thursday, Sunday is the New Moon, and the Eagles play the Falcons a week from Monday. Are you excited? I’m excited. Let’s outline how we got here:
CHIP KELLY
We can’t even begin to talk about the 2015 Philadelphia Eagles without first acknowledging how much everyone in Philadelphia is praying that Chip Kelly and all that sports science are The Real Deal. Kelly basically gutted the 2014 birds roster and built the Eagles up with new stars after releasing nearly everyone whose jerseys sold most widely off of the Modells shelves in the greater Philadelphia area.
I wish I were hyperbolizing more than I actually am — mostly so that fans don’t feel like their Maclin jersey they got last xmas was a waste of whoever’s cashmoney got spent on it. But true Birds fans shouldn’t worry . There are some recognizable faces in the halls — Huff, Sproles, Barwin, Cox, Celek, and, well, Cooper and others, but Foles, Boykin, Maclin, Mathis, and Cole, to name a few, are gone. Yeah, you read right: cya, Trent Cole. These were players that many fans considered either franchise players or players on their way to becoming franchise players. Chip Kelly might not believe in the idea of franchise players — and, right now, the franchise is okay with that. Maclin stepped up big in 2014, and many fans looked forward to seeing him take the field again. The greatest loss, though, for most was that of LeSean McCoy — despite his less-than-stellar performance last year, as anyone with him on their fantasy squad can attest, he still felt like he was an Eagle through and through, and to see him go anywhere else was tough.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the way that some of these players we respected so much in green left: not happily. Many of them, most loudly Boykin and McCoy, had some unhappy comments about Kelly’s fairness as a coach. Boykin said that though he didn’t believe Kelly is a racist, he found him to be “uncomfortable around men of our culture.” McCoy said that Kelly doesn’t “like or respect stars” and that he considered a player’s race when deciding whether or not the keep them. With the loss of DeSean Jackson last year — still something that fans bring up when they call into WIP bitching about where they see holes in the roster — LeSean’s comments were notable.
While we can’t talk about the Eagles without talking about Chip Kelly, most former players have clarified their comments by now. By force of hand or because the headlines that they were making weren’t the headlines they intended to make? Did the sports media read between the lines to punch out a paper-selling headline or did these guys really mean to imply that Kelly doesn’t like young black men? Kelly, in press conferences, comes off as overly focused on The Game and his role as coach within it. His personal feelings/life or relationships with players are not on the table for discussion. He doesn’t want to talk about contracts. He doesn’t want to detail which players stop by his office to chat and which don’t. He’s not going to tell you who’ll be in the Nickel spot against Atlanta. He wants to talk about football and he wants to talk about what he wants to tell you about not what you want to know about. Maybe Kelly’s hyper-focus is a flaw — but most Eagles fans hope it’s something that the team can benefit from.
“Chip Kelly doesn’t want you to know what he’s thinking. No one knows what he’s thinking,” an emcee on WIP said yesterday. In other words, in order to write a preview of the Philadelphia Eagles for the 2015 season, I am going to have to take a few knees; I am going to have to admit that the top might keep spinning or the top might fall over; I am going to have to say that all those #InChipWeTrust hashtags make me both insanely nervous and giddy, simultaneously, which is probably the most familiar feeling for Eagles fans, anyway. So what’s new?
FINAL ROSTER
Sam Bradford is QB1. If he can stay healthy, preseason has shown us he a total badass. All the haters when we traded Foles can shut up now until he gets hurt again, (which I say in jest but also, seriously, come at me then and only then.) He was the Rams FIRST-OVERALL draft pick in 2010, and now he’s an Eagle. Let’s be okay with this. Mark Sanchez is QB2. Fine, sure, fine. Mark Sanchez played really well as QB1 for the first half of last season, let’s not forget. Mark Sanchez will always be “butt-fumble” Mark Sanchez, but most Jets fans will tell you he makes a better Eagle than he did Jet. He works well in The System. And because it’s recent news: Matt Barkley was traded to Arizona for a conditional 5th round draft pick, and Tim Tebow was let go when the final cuts were made to the roster. Right now, there are 52 guys on the Eagles 2015 roster, leaving room for a third-string QB — maybe. The birds might add a third-stringer to the practice squad instead of the active roster. (Notice how little attention I gave to God’s favorite son, TT? Now let’s move on — )
In lieu of Kelly trading/cutting/letting a number of key players from last year go, in addition to having a new QB1, the Eagles have found themselves stocking up on some legitimate talent offensively. It’s a relief to see DeMarco Murray in green & silver rather than in blue & silver, but don’t dismiss Ryan Matthews, another addition to the squad this year, tearing it up in practice and preseason. Both running backs should add considerably to the Eagles’ ability to get the ball down the field, and both work well in the The System. Darren Sproles is back and will probably be used on the field in much the same way as he was last year, but we wouldn’t be putting Chip Kelly’s name in lights if we didn’t expect more from Sproles this season. There’s always this idea that he’s hiding something up his sleeve, and let’s just say we’re pretty sure there are a few magic tricks involving a certain former-Saint whose first name is Darren.
This being said, the innovation that Kelly’s System brings to the field is, in a way, all about speed. Mid-season, we’ll begin to forget that football is typically played a step or two slower and ask each other “why isn’t he showing us his hand?” The magic, those who watch the Eagles regularly need to remember, is that it doesn’t always look like magic.
There are three WRs whose names we’ve seen before on the backs of Eagle jerseys: Huff, Matthews, and Cooper. Matthews was our second-overall pick last year, and seems to have grown as a player. Expect more from him. All the rest are news-in-green: Agholor, Ajirotutu, and Miles Austin. We hope for the most from Agholor. The rest of the offense — TE & OL — looks generally good. There’s nothing to write home about here, which we’re gonna say is a good sign.
Defensively, watch for for vast improvements to what was an incredibly disappointing secondary in 2014. Each division team in the NFC East has a stellar WR (Beckham Jr., Jackson, and Bryant) that the secondary needs to be able to cover. If the 2015 backfield — some new and some stepped up from primarily Special Teams — can show depth and prevent Big Plays from happening, the defense should be able to hold its ground.
Defensive lineman Fletcher Cox is still around, and expect Eagles fans to be yelling about him as much if not more than they were last season. When he’s doing well, there’s no happy pun that a grown, straight man won’t yell loudly into the television in celebration. The front line should be solid, with Logan, Thornton, and Curry. We also still have Connor Barwin on the outside around to make some big plays. Though his name inspires less punnery, he’s handsome — and, you know, good for a few great plays when we need them. DeMeco Ryans is bbaaaccckkk, kids! We were devastated to see him go down last year, but happy to see him as the senior inside LB, along with Kiko Alonso (have I really waited this long to mention this dude? Because we’re PSYCHED about this dude — ) and Mychal Kendricks. The three of them together form a formidable inside line. Marcus Smith, Kelly’s first-round draft pick in 2014, makes the final roster, but hasn’t yet lived up to where he was selected in the draft. Maybe this year we’ll get to hear his name more often? Let’s hope if so, it’s a good thing.
Kelly’s improvements on the defense for the 2015 season maybe made less splashy headlines than those on the offensive side, but he’s definitely stacked up some great players on the D side of the ball. The birds should have a great defense — it’s not what everyone is talking about when they talk about the Eagles, but it might turn out to be what makes the headlines, after all.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If the Eagles live up to everything I’ve outlined above, we can expect to go at least 10–6 like we did last year. It was devastating for the team to have had so many successes during the regular season and not make the playoffs, yes. That a team could go 10–6 and not make the playoffs was a punch in the face to birds fans everywhere. Rather than focusing on the great things that happened over the season, we could only hone in on the bad. And who must’ve felt the same way? Chip Kelly. So whether you’re Team #InChipWeTrust or Team #HeyChipYouMust, you have to admit the guy went above and beyond with his new power to build the team he thought would get the birds to the playoffs — and to the SuperBowl? Well, let’s not go ahead and get our hopes up or anything. But it *IS* Superbowl 50 — oh you haven’t heard? They ditched the roman numerals system because it’ would have been Superbowl…. L. Yeah.
UPDATE: https://twitter.com/NFL_Eagles247/status/640571777115029504
