Chip Kelly thinks his Philadelphia Eagles – who rattled off 53 plays before halftime to the tune of 24 offensive points and 322 yards – were too slow on offense.
(Eyes roll across America).
Really, Chip?
C’mon, buddy. Don’t be that guy.
“I felt like it was slow, to be honest with you,” Kelly said when asked about the first quarter. “We put the ball on the ground too much, we didn’t get the ball to the officials, we could have sped things up. … That’s something we need to continue to work on.”
Fine, you go do that, Chip. Go work on it, run your guys into the ground and burn ‘em out.
But for today, just know it was fast. So fast Twitter’s obnoxious commentators couldn’t keep up. One play on average of every 22 seconds. Oregon in disguise as Philadelphia. Defenders sucking wind, Jon Gruden gushing your praises like he would pay anything to attend one of your coaching clinics.
If we talked about New England’s offensive speed, Philadelphia makes the Patriots offense look like a turtle crossing a highway.
But I’m actually not writing to heap more praise on top of Kelly for a great half of football. I’m writing because I want to know what’s wrong with us? Are we just that unhappy?
I’m referring to all those negative Nelly’s out there who take a beautiful moment like last night and begin bashing it.
To recap:
It won’t work all season
Michael Vick can’t survive this pace
LeSean McCoy will need leg transplants
Everyone will be hurt and ticked off by Week 7
These are all variations of things I heard in the first 24 hours of the Eagles rolling the Redskins last night. Whether or not they are valid is not the point. We’re so obsessed with “calling it” that we can’t enjoy anything. What I mean is we have a sick obsession with tearing others down. We write the history before it actually happens. We think we know exactly what’s going to happen before it happens.
The last thing we should do is listen to people who think they know everything. They don’t.
And this does not just apply to sports, but life in general. So I should listen to my broke friend on monetary advice? Tell me again why my new business venture won’t work, again, please.
How about some nutritional advice from someone who is in poor health, or relationship advice from someone who’s never really been in a relationship. Yes, single at 45, please tell me what the keys to a successful marriage are.
We think everyone wants to hear our opinion – on everything – but they don’t. The truth is, we’re watching people on TV who are paid to tell us what they think and we do either two things with it: agree or disagree.
There are varying shades of agreement, but really, that’s what it boils down to. The problem comes from others telling you why they think it’s right or wrong with a conviction of perfection behind it – an absolute believe of knowing they are right.
But you can’t know anything for sure. Nothing is guaranteed. A hundred things happening right now are changing the course of what will happen in the next five minutes. So we really don’t know anything – we just assume to know based on a number of internal factors.
So here’s the thing: I assume that I like this Philadelphia offense and Chip Kelly. I enjoyed what he did at Oregon. Did he ever win a national title? No, but he made Oregon games so much more fun to watch than other college football games. Which is what happened last night in the first half. I enjoyed the first half of the Eagles-Redskins more than I enjoyed any other NFL game this week. I would like to see more. I want to see what happens.
And I don’t need someone on the radio telling me within 12 hours of the game why it won’t ever work long term. Lots of things don’t work long term, partially because they are not supposed to.
So before we totally kill Chip Kelly for what this offense might not do or what it could do to his team, can we just enjoy it for a little while?
Do we know how to do that anymore?
No, because bashing and drama draw eyes and ears. Positive thinking? Go to church, right? We’d rather trash the new iPhone before it’s been actually seen or used. We’d rather write off a movie that some critic didn’t like than go see it ourselves. We’ll trust complete strangers bashing something on social media before we do our own analysis.
Ease up, ‘Merica. Slow down and smell the roses and stop seeing only the thorns. Life ain’t always beautiful, but it is a beautiful life.
And for 30 minutes, I watched beautiful, fast, fun football last night.
Thanks, Chip Kelly.
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