Chip Kelly spoke to the assembled media today, grudgingly, and was a combination of festive and perturbed– sort of like the general demeanor of your UPS guy: cordial enough, but might take a swing at you at any moment if your choices pose too much of a challenge to him. Chip joked about switching roles with reporters when they talked over him…

… but was decidedly less jovial on repeated attempts to get him to admit that DeMarco Murray has been converted by his Cowboys captors and sent here to destroy us all sucks. I mean, Chip was talking out of the side of his mouth so much that he probably requested utility man Howie Roseman drill him some new holes in his cheek from which to speak.

The topic du jour, however, was Murray’s one-on-one with Jeffrey Lurie – which feels a lot like when Brody got in the bunker with the vice president – and while Chip didn’t deny such a pow-wow took place, he said it was merely because Murray sat next to Lurie in first class on the way home from Boston, not because Murray went through some sort of official channel to request a favor from the owner on this, the day of his Patriots victory. I’m sure. Still, Kelly said Murray voiced his frustration to both him and Lurie both before and after the game (Chip said Murray knew the game plan was to give Darren Sproles and Kenjon Barner more touches), but ultimately was just happy that the Eagles won. Yeah, right.

*He said all players sit in first class, which is nuts because do planes really have 50+ first class seats? Does that mean Roseman travels in the luggage bin, or do pilots let him sit on their lap like a big boy?

Then Ed Werder, presumably fresh out of his weekly secret meeting with Jerry Jones and seven exotic strippers, got on his Twitter machine, making it clear that his original report never said anything about private offices or what have you**:


**Which is true. But Werder did start to dial back his reporting later on Monday, perhaps after a few unhappy phone calls from the Eagles.

Meanwhile, human algorithm Mike Florio chimed in with the following speculation regarding the financials of the Eagles possibly cutting Murray:

More importantly, the Eagles owe Murray a fully-guaranteed base salary of $7 million for 2016. The only way to avoid that payment would be to cut him now, and then to have someone claim his contract on waivers.

That’s where this one gets the most interesting. Would another team step into the shoes of the Murray deal? With $5 million in signing bonus, a $3 million roster bonus, and most of a $1 million base salary for 2015 already paid, does a $7 million commitment for the stretch run in 2015 plus all of 2016 justify the investment?

If no one claims the Murray contract on waivers, he’ll become a free agent — and the Eagles would be entitled to an offset of the $7 million based on whatever he makes next season.

A lot going on here.