December 27, 2015
Michael Perez/AP
Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly looks on during his team's 38-24 loss to the Washington Redskins.
Execution — whether it be the players’ or the coaches’ — has been a major theme with Chip Kelly throughout what has become a lost season for the Philadelphia Eagles. That theme continued following their 38-24 loss to Washington on Saturday night.
"Just our execution," Kelly said of his biggest coaching disappointments after his team was eliminated from playoff contention. "We didn't do a good enough job to put those guys in position to make plays because I think we have some guys that can make plays, and again, that's on us."
And despite that the third-year head coach has seen his team regress year after year, while continuing to shoulder much of the blame, Kelly isn’t worried about the lights going out on his time in Philly.
How fitting... The lights go out on #Eagles coach Chip Kelly's press conference as the lights go out on the season! pic.twitter.com/Dwh1WZv2uZ
— Jeff Skversky (@JeffSkversky) December 27, 2015
"One hundred percent. That's all on my shoulders," Kelly said when asked how responsible he was for his team missing the playoffs for the second straight year. "It's the same thing I said a year ago, it's unacceptable. We have got to find a way to do a better job, and we have to put these guys in a better position to make plays. So it's one hundred percent on my shoulders."
Last offseason, however, Kelly assumed control of personnel and overhauled a roster that won 10 games in each of the previous two seasons. So the fact his team has fallen even further in his first year as the general manager is more than just an indictment of his coaching ability. But when confronted with the question of who is more at fault for the way this season went, Coach Kelly decided to defend GM Kelly, which also served as a way to protect his players.
"I think [the players are] good enough," he said. "I just think we have to put them [the players] in position to make plays."
Had Kelly gone the other route, he would have basically been saying that his players weren’t talented enough to win, and in a sense been putting the blame on not only the GM who constructed the roster, but also the players themselves. But to anyone looking on objectively from the outside, it’s clear some questionable personnel decisions were made last spring.
And those moves — even though they were of his own making — put the coach at a disadvantage heading into the season.
Perhaps Kelly doesn’t differentiate between his two roles when speaking to the media; to him, coach and GM could be intertwined into one all-encompassing position. So when he says that he isn’t concerned about job security, it's unclear whether he's limiting that to one role or both.
"If it's not good enough, it's not good enough," he said. "But I'm going to continue to work as hard as I can and show up early in the morning and stay late at night and continue to work. But I don't think anybody in my situation would tell you they are worried about -- if they are worried about getting fired, they probably should already have been fired."
While you may not agree with the notion that Kelly’s job is secure, the idea of coaching as though it is will always be the correct way to go — especially when you’re also the GM. Because when the opposite happens, you often wind up leveraging the future for the present. And with a very important offseason, one full of decisions that include finding (or re-signing) a quarterback, Kelly can’t afford to be looking over his shoulder.
