Philly Phile | This is who the Eagles are

GOOD CALL

Still had fun.

Yeah, the Eagles’ effort Sunday evening in a 20-10 loss to Dallas was lacking to be sure, but, if you’re going to endure witnessing such an experience, gotta say, what me and my girlfriend opted to do was better than any choice Chip Kelly made on third down.

We watched the proceedings on the beach, just a few long bombs by Sam Bradford (should they exist) away from Atlantic City, on a big-screen TV adjacent to our favorite spot at the Jersey Shore, along with a couple thousand others.

It wasn’t exactly the same as being at the Linc, but it was a pretty awesome tailgating experience – with better food, at lower prices, and, you know, our toes in the sand.

Kinda takes the edge off of seeing the “awful” play out in front of someone.

Kudos to the Brigantine Chamber of Commerce for putting on the event, and Laguna Bar & Grill for, essentially, hosting it.

Don’t get it. I really don’t.

The ire Eagles fans are showing toward their team and its coach makes no sense to me. It’s like seeing and hearing an individual who made a bad choice in a partner continually blame the partner for being that bad choice, that the partner should have told them they’d suck as a partner, that they should have warned about all their flaws and not concealed ’em.

Newsflash, fans … they were honest. They were open. All along. You were privy to their every flaw, and chose to ignore them, or rationalize them, because, well, you opted for hope instead of reality.

There was no Super Bowl in this team’s immediate future, save for an out-and-out, one-in-a-million fluke. The talent level wasn’t, and isn’t, there, and the injury likelihood within a tattered and torn core was, and is, through the roof.

I loved hearing experts – doctors, mind you – come on sportstalk radio this summer prior to the start of the season and pontificate how the probability of Sam Bradford, DeMarco Murray and Kiko Alonso suffering any recurrence to previous injury was extremely low, that the numbers show otherwise. Puh-leeze. Just two weeks into the 2015 campaign, Alonso and fellow LB Mychal Kendricks already are felled by ailments linked to their past, and those same experts are now back on the air, just this morning, discussing how, hmmm, yeah, those ligaments and tendons really are never as good as they were prior to injury, regardless of how well the surgery went.

Same with the prognosticators predicting 12, 13 or more wins for the Birds this season. Where were these coming from? Based off four preseason series in which Bradford was hot for the latter three and remained intact for all four?

The expectations, fueled in large part by the rationalizations to overlook its glaringly obvious flaws, for this team were insane. When I cautioned people to stay away from bridges following last week’s loss, stating that the team ultimately would be OK … well, yeah, it will be, in terms of what it is capable of producing, which is between 8 to 10 wins. It will be in the playoff hunt, but it won’t necessarily make the postseason. That’s the limits of what this team is, and always was.

Believing more was possible, or hoping for that, well, that’s not on the team. That’s on you.

Chip Kelly never deceived anyone. He made moves and he’s called the plays. No funny business. No sneaking around. Everything was, and has been, out in the open.

He, like his team, has been a failure after two weeks. Nothing more, nothing less … and, please, people, enough with the distinction about his role as coach on one hand and as GM on the other, as if one doesn’t beget the other. He wanted both positions, got both, and the results are his to own. If you think the GM has let the coach down in this regard, you ain’t been watching the coach closely enough. He’s been brutal.

That being said, even with his arrogance and control-freakishness, Kelly hasn’t led anyone astray or even misspoke, you know, outside of the normal coachspeak BS – just set to his hyper-speed style.

I haven’t heard him rave about how great his team was going to be. Not once. He’s shared what he’d like his team to be able to do, and what he, like every other coach in the NFL, wants his team ultimately able to do.

Full disclosure: I’ve never bought into the brilliance of Kelly, this concept that he’s a revolutionary figure in the sport of football, a mind, a genius bound to change the face of the sport – at every level. Just never saw it, and never will.

Perhaps it was easier for me not to fall prey to the hype surrounding this team in the preseason. Never believed in Bradford, either, and remain steadfast in feeling that trading for him was a major mistake by Kelly.

So, maybe, I was better prepared for this 0-2 start. Or better prepared to handle it.

Thing is, I never “got” what others saw in this team that fueled all the hype, all the belief. Still don’t, and spare explaining it to me because you’re dealing in rationalizations, not reality, when you do – and they mean nothing.

This team’s performance is evidence of that.

- Jack Kerwin  |  [email protected]

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