Sigh.
0-5.
I outsmarted myself and started Roethlisberger over Russell Wilson, and that was the difference.
Dang it!!!
Is anyone following the bowl games?
I’m very, very nervous for my Spartans against Bama. I have hope though!
^ Most bowl games aren’t worth the time.
DW went to MSU, so I will be watching and rooting for the Spartans.
Chip Kelly is no longer employed.
I’m a bit shocked the Eagles didn’t wait until the season was over. It makes no sense to fire the coach with one game left. Something must have happened that we haven’t heard about yet.
NFL schedule says the Divisional Round will be on Friday Jan 15, and Saturday Jan 16.
Friday? Is this something new?
Good point, @notrichenough. It will be interesting to hear Lurie tomorrow for clues.
This is my first year playing fantasy football. I am addicted. I also,somehow, managed to be playing for the championship. I cannot wait until this weekend. I cannot wait until next year.
Firing Kelly now gives them a chance to see the interim while there’s still active coaching to be done. It may put a spark into the players who, according to reports, had stopped playing for their coach. Maybe they can see what they have going into the offseason. It also tells the fan base that they mean it but canning him with a game to go. The players and fans are the more valuable asset in this scenario.
@saintfan, I don’t think one game is really enough to show whether an interim coach could be a potential replacement. Look what happened when Miami fired Philbin - the players rallied for one or two games, and then they went right back to being the inept losers we all know and love. What would your evaluation of Miami’s interim coach been after two games where he went 2-0 vs. the last 9, where he went 2-7?
Also keep in mind that while only Kelly got fired, most or all of the coordinators, assistant coaches, trainers, personnel people, etc, are now going to lose their jobs when the season is over, because a new general manager and head coach are going to clean house and bring in their own people. So they have little motivation at this point, either.
This is interesting:
Alabama makes everybody nervous. But D’Antonio is one of the best coaches around, and he has some great players. Last year when Ohio State was in the playoff, people thought they wouldn’t be able to stand up to the teams with more “talent”. It turned out that wasn’t the case.
Last year no one expected John Fox to be fired when he went to the year end meeting with Elway. I think they just relied they had different ways of coaching/managing and neither was going to change. Seems to have worked out for Fox and the Broncos. Del Rio had already left or the Broncos might have made him head coach based on his time as interim coach when Fox had his heart attack so maybe Philly is trying to keep one or two coaches by firing Kelly before the end of the year?
I don’t much about Kelly or his history at Oregon. Was he really that good a college coach, or was he buoyed up by the quality of Marcus Mariota?
From what I can determine, teams retain exclusive rights to assistant coaches who are under contract (the league defines “assistant coach” as any coach other than the head coach, so the coordinators are considered assistant coaches for this purpose) for several weeks after the team’s last game, unless that assistant is interviewing for a head coach position.
So Philly is in no danger of losing any other coaches for a month or so, unless one gets a head coach job (and based on the Eagles’ performance this year, that seems unlikely).
Mariota only played at Oregon for Kelly’s last year there, in 2012. He was quite successful before Mariota came along, both as head coach and offensive coordinator at Oregon, and at other colleges prior to Oregon.
He seems to be very good at the college level. Some of his ideas, especially around personnel, didn’t work out in the NFL, where ability almost always trumps having a personality that Chip thought was desirable. He gutted that team, and didn’t get players to replace the ones he got rid of. And getting Bradford looks like a huge mistake.
Thanks, NRE. That’s very helpful amd makes a lot of sense.
I am not an admirer of Chip Kelley, for a lot of reasons (I just find him irritating, I think his ego and bravado is way out of sync with what he has done). I think he is typical of why many college coaches fail when they get to the pros, they are two different beasts. For one thing, in college the players are basically slaves to the system for the couple of years they are there, the coach controls their scholarships, it is basically a dictatorship, and people like Kelly forget that NFL players are not indentured servants, and they try and treat them like children and it doesn’t work. Twitter is awash with what players in Philadelphia are saying, and it paints a picture of someone who didn’t have a clue.
The other problem with Kelly is he was used to the college game, and defenses in the college game, no matter how good, are nowhere as good as a typical pro defense. He was successful with his rapid offense because college defensive players don’t have the skills to keep up with it. Pro defenses are faster and stronger than college, and more importantly, innovation in the NFL lasts a couple of seasons. Kelley’s system revolved around rapid play calling, NFL defensive coordinators and players have said that Philadelphia basically had 6 or 7 looks, and they knew what to expect, and it showed.
The other thing is Kelley’s rapid offense works in college because college teams are huge, they have like 83 kids on the team, so the defense can sub out and allow guys to catch their breath because the offense leaves the defense on the field so much with his scheme. In the NFL, even with package substitutions, it leaves his own defense tired. Not to mention that Kelly basically didn’t care about the defense, and his D coordinator is not exactly going to be compared to a wade phillips or Bellichick, and you ended up with a team that was going to have a hard time.
The one thing I don’t understand is that Lurie is putting Howie Roseman back as GM, which is puzzling, Roseman didn’t exactly put together a great team the years he was GM, so why bring him back?Sometimes I wonder about team ownership, it looks like the Giants are going to can Coughlin but keep Jerry Reese. Reese other than Beckham and Victor Cruise has not exactly brought in great personnel, their defense is pathetic, they don’t have a good running back, outside Beckham their receiving corps is dismal, and their O line even when not injured is pretty bad.
I can’t believe I stuck out the Oregon-TCU game after the Frogs went down by 31, but I’m glad I did. 
I didn’t.
Bizarre. The end of my previous post keeps disappearing.
nre Bradford might have been a mistake but Foles was worse