Did Chip Kelly Do Something Unconventional Today?

He did.

More exploration into the zany brain of that wacky Chip Kelly. Yesterday, Tim McManus wrote about the sleep monitors that Kelly is asking players to wear to bed:

It’s not just the nutrition; Graham says he is benefitting from all the sports science that Chip Kelly utilizes.

“I see my body changing a lot,” said Graham. “I really didn’t know how dehydrated I was until they started doing that [sports science]. Now I’m hydrated, I’m moving a lot better out there, recovering a lot faster. If we keep it going, no telling how we’re going to be towards the end of the season.”

Graham told us a little bit about the sleep monitors that Kelly is asking his players to use.  The device is worn on the wrist, and is linked to an app that you can download on your phone. It tracks how many times you wake up during the night, and whether or not you are getting quality sleep.

We can only assume that Andy Reid encouraged players to wear CPAP masks to bed.

Does anyone else get the sense that Chip has the greatest collection of apps ever on his iPhone? Hey, this app tells me to rub my finger in a circular motion to let it know how I’m feeling– it makes me calmer. This app tracks my BMs and tells me when I should go– it allows me to have optimal separation. This app lets me take a picture of my boner and send it to friends, and then it deletes the evidence– it makes me a smarter Brett Favre.

Do you also get the sense that every time Chip sees a filler health story on Today or a consumer report from an excitable Nyida Han he thinks to himself, “I got to try that! That’s going to put my players in a better position to win.” Kind of progressive-paranoid in that regard. Somewhere, he has a 20-year supply of tin foil hats and organic vegetable seeds because Monsanto is trying to kill us.

As for the sleep monitor? I tried one of these apps a few years ago because my biggest struggle every day is putting my feet on the floor (getting a working dog that jumps on you at 6:30 helps, though)– kind of gimmicky. This one used the iPhone’s gyroscope (I feel like the fact that we all have gyroscopes in our pockets goes under-appreciated these days) to track when you were in REM or a deeper sleep and then adjusted your alarm time accordingly. Problem: a significant other, dog, really spectacular wet dream or overzealous tooth fairy could throw the thing off. I used it for like three nights. But we’ll wait and see how it works for the Eagles. And if they have success, I’m sure the Flyers would love to get their hands on some:

Meanwhile, good article on Philly.com today from Rich Hoffman, who explores the possibility that the NFL – which I’m thinking is Chip’s ACLU – could throttle the Eagles, thanks to a rule that states that the offense must give the defense time to respond to substitutions and cannot deliberately try to force a penalty:

We see all of that happening. Once the games start, though, there will be another goal – unstated but very real for a coach who really seems to want to create the highest-tempo offense the NFL has ever seem.

Simply, that goal is to make sure the umpire stays the hell out of the way.

Which, when you say that to offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur, brings a laugh. But it is a very serious part of this process. If the NFL decides that Kelly’s offense is too fast, the league can rein it in by instructing the umpire to slow things down. If all of his teaching and all of those hand signals from the sideline work too well, and enough opponents complain, a lightning-fast offense can be braked into a simply fast offense by the guys in the striped shirts.

Once again, kind of like the anti-Reid in that regard. I imagine the league once considered reducing the play clock to 25 seconds and dangling Snausages in front of Reid just so he would get the plays in more quickly.