Is the chip hate because the media made him out to be someone that would revolutionize the game? As someone that doesn't follow the **** show of college football, I don't understand. He's just a dude coaching, but so many seem like they're waiting to jump any time he stumbles.

Byron Maxwell's attempted tackle on Tolbert, if you can even call it that, was pathetic.

I think, at this point, that we can all accept the fact that this season is over. Next season will probably be Chip's "do or die" round.

I guess we just root for Temple *now.




*Yes, I said Temple.

Eagles were 65% to playoff before this weekend (betting market). They are probably just under 50% now after losing a tough road game. Clearly no point even turning up in Dallas in two weeks, season over.

Percentages are one thing but do you really think they can beat the likes of NE, GB, etc.? This offense is a bore to watch. What a turnaround from the last two years where the offense was exciting and the defense sucked. Complete role reversal.

Demarco/Jordan can't catch.
Why are we running Demarco wide all the time?
The secondary has been fun to watch, they're going for the ball every down.
Defensive line has played really well (except last night, tough matchup)
Bradford just doesn't seem to have it, where are the big plays? His average yards per completion was something like 4 yards?
Ryan Mathews has been impressive
Need more Sproles

oh and this:

Peters will be back for Cowboys

I think he made himself out to be someone who would revolutionize the game. But I also don't follow college, and I'm predisposed to hate anyone associated with the Eagles.

Wins and losses aside, this is what I hate most about this season. I don't like watching this team play offense, I am legit bored by them. I find myself playing on my phone during the game, and frankly that sucks. Even if they don't win, I at least would like to be entertained.

.

did you watch that game?

both outside WRs can't get open downfield, so what is he supposed to do, throw to a guy who is blanketed?

did you see the throw to Erzt over his shoulder down the sideline? that is why Bradford is here and Foles is not.

he hasnt looked great all the time, but he's had flashes. and he's only played 7 games. honestly, i'd take him next season now because he's only getting more comfortable and we're not gonna find anyone better off the scrap heap. maybe they can draft someone late, but he's not starting.

OK well maybe that's not as much a knock on Bradford as the offense in general but we literally have no deep threat outside of Riley Cooper every 35 attempts or so. Something needs to be done to spread the field and with the number of rushing attempts they've been having per game, maybe utilize some play action or something.

i agree about the deep threat, when i said they couldnt get open, i meant in general, not just against the panthers. NYG had basically DIII players covering them and they still only got open a little.

Not sure how many of his press conferences you've heard, but he doesn't say much and won't talk about himself at all. I don't think he's ever claimed to be revolutionary, unless he was doing it in college. He does things differently, and I think the whole "revolutionize the game" narrative came from analysts going overboard. At least that's the only way I can make sense of it.

Chip: "I said this a long time ago: If you weren’t in the room with Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne when they invented this game, you stole it from somebody else."

They use play action quite a bit when they're able to run the ball.

Chip didn't claim to be revolutionary, but the sports science stuff, his up-tempo style, and the whole getting rid of your offensive stars for a group consisting mostly of rookies, cast offs, and damaged goods might lead you to think otherwise. In his first two years I would agree that the criticism was mostly unwarranted, but it's hard not to find fault with him for our current situation.

But isn't it good that he's trying new and risky strategies? Do you want a bold and innovative coach or someone who just does the same-old? A key part of a risky move is that it might not work, but if it does, the reward is high.

Any franchise that hasn't luckboxed into a top 10 QB should be willing to take risks, otherwise mediocrity is the ceiling.

A good way of ensuring that the status quo is maintained is to condemn any changes that don't work straight away. (What do you mean we haven't won all 7 of the first games? I thought that the bold-risky strategy == guaranteed-to-work-first-time-every-time strategy.)

This isn't a lottery, though. Chip specifically brought in these guys. Bradford looks terrible, the recievers he's drafted aren't getting it done, the OL he's neglected in the draft and free agency has been mediocre, and the backfield he spent a ton of money on is being brutally mismanaged week after week. I've been a fan of Chip since he arrived but I'm not going to absolve him of blame just because he took a risk.

don't think he did anything THAT risky tho. only real asset he gave up was a 2016 2nd round pick

-foles sucked so he flipped him for someone who was more expensive but had more upside
-shady was expensive and wasnt a culture fit
-mathis and herremans were old and declining
-williams/fletcher were both awful
-maxwell was a lot of $ but nfl contracts aren't guaranteed and are easy to get out of when they don't work
-same thing with murray

if they had traded 4 1st and cox/kendricks to get mariota that would have been risky but i don't think what he did this off season was crazy

It's not a lottery, but there's an element of luck/variance in a lot of what the coach/GM does. Consider the draft every year, every team does scouting, has a team of personnel evaluating, and there are always booms and busts. There's not much evidence that some teams are better than others at drafting (every team has hot spells), there seems to be more luck than skill. There should be less variance in free agency than drafting but there's still plenty of it I'm sure in which are booms and which are busts.

If Chip thought that Sanchez=Foles and neither was what he needed, then why keep both? Might as well flip one and look for upside. If the upside isn't there, go to Sanchez and you haven't lost anything. Upside doesn't mean definitely better, it means potentially better. Only way to find out with a flawed QB like Bradford is bring him in. Even if Bradford doesn't work out, it seems that the extra salary and draft picks were worth it for the chance of getting a franchise QB.

Thurmond/Ryan Mathews has been great pick-ups. Hicks seems to have been a great draft pick despite all the criticism at the time. Nolan Carroll and Allen Barbre has been pretty good as in-house prospects who have improved. Not everything Chip has done has been gold, not everything he's done has been bad.

As for sports science, Eagles have been among the healthiest teams over the last few years. Uptempo doesn't always work but seems to give an edge at times. (It backfires a bit when offense can't get going at all.)

I don't think that Chip shouldn't be criticized, but there seems to have been a huge overreaction. I'm not sure how Chip could be expected to know, for instance, that Jordan Matthews would suffer such a huge regression (despite a great training camp) and that wide receiver drops would be largely responsible for a number of key losses. (If he'd known that, he might have overpaid Maclin. That doesn't mean that letting Maclin go was the wrong decision at the time.)

I agree he deserves criticism for how things have played out this year so far. I was more talking about the hate from the moment he came to the NFL, people actively rooting for him to fail. I guess it has to be a carryover from college, so it's hard for me to understand why.

Valar, you're misinterpreting what I'm saying in a lot of what you wrote. I'm a fan of Chip and I was on board with the roster overhaul despite some skepticism for the same reasons you were. However there's a lot of blind faith that went into that, and when you hand pick all of these guys yourself, coach them up, and your offense looks like hot garbage for huge periods of the season, a lot of blame is naturally going to come your way. I don't think that's unfair, and I definitely don't buy the 'Chip just got unlucky' angle. There's some of that, obviously, but drops are only a small percentage of the problems they've had offensively.

The bottom line is if you take a borderline top 5 offense and overhaul it dramatically and get a below average offense instead, you've made some significant mistakes somewhere along the way. Criticism for that is warranted. Should he be fired? No, I don't think so, but I also don't know how long his leash should be going forward. At some point he has to turn this thing around.

I agree that mistakes have been made, but my point is that it's easy to see the mistakes with hindsight. When you are making the decisions you don't get the 20/20 vision into the future.

"take a borderline top 5 offense and overhaul it dramatically and get a below average offense"
But he made it into a top 5 offense in the first place. So he's getting no credit for making it top 5, and all the blame for turning it into below average? The way the offensive line and WRs have played, it's likely that the offence would also be mediocre with Foles/LeSean/Maclin. He's also made the defense into borderline top 5, no credit for that?

I think his leash should still be very long. He's done some good things, some bad over 2.5 years, but more good than bad. What are you going to do instead--hope Caldwell gets fired by the Lions so the Eagles can pick him up?

Also, there seems to be a general point. He overhauled the roster. Didn't work. Therefore should be fired/short leash.

If he'd stood pat, and the offense became average then he wouldn't have gotten the same blame. That's why everyone is so risk averse in the nfl. Don't make any waves, thread water and you'll have a job for live (see most of the nfl coaches/GMs). Try something new and if it doesn't work you'll be fired back to collegeball in a cannon.

A lot of people thought Bradford was mediocre and that we significantly overpaid, which is why the trade was ridiculed pretty hard by most of the football world. I don't know if hindsight really applies when that's the case. The McCoy Alonso trade is a better example of what you're talking about. If Alonso came here and played terribly while McCoy reverted back to all-pro status, I think you would still look at the trade and say that it made sense at the time and nobody could have predicted the end result.

The Eagles have been a borderline top 5 offense for pretty much the entirety of the Shady / Desean / Maclin era, so no, he didn't "make" the Eagles into a top offensive team. That's silly. What he did was get them back on track after Reid got fired, and while that's worth giving credit for, it's a huge stretch to pretend that he came here and made this offense go. There was a lot of talent already in place that had performed at an elite level in recent years. He made an extremely risky decision to part with those guys, and while many of us gave him the benefit of the doubt, that was contingent on something resembling encouraging results. I don't know about you, but I'm not seeing anything from this offense that makes me think things are headed in the right direction.

As for the offensive line and WRs underperforming, we knew there were a lot of concerns heading into the season, especially on the OL. There's no excuse for not drafting another OL or signing somebody during the offseason to bolster their depth. They lost an all pro and another starter and decided that the no-name backups they had were good enough. Is that 20/20 hindsight too?

I'm sure there are plenty of better alternatives to hiring a terrible coach like Caldwell. I think Chip should get another year at least, but that's contingent on seeing significant improvement at some point.

regarding this comment, a franchise is better off picking the best player available when their time comes instead of picking a lesser player based solely on need. accumulating the best available assets based on draft position will serve a franchise the best in the long run.

regarding Mathis, his agent asked for his release after months of unsuccessful attempts to renegotiate his contract and/or trade him. Mathis ended up signing with the Broncos for $1.5 million less this year than what he was going to make with his current contract with the Eagles (assuming he gets paid by the Broncos for all of his incentive bonuses above his $2.5M base contract). the market demonstrated Mathis' worth by not signing him for more than his Eagles contract, and the Eagles were correct in not signing him for more.
Rosenhaus led him to believe he was worth more than he was, and Rosenhaus was wrong.