Well, we have our soup du jour for the week, or for however many days until humanity checks out for Yuletide gatherings: Chip Kelly’s 4th and 1 playcall that had about as much to do with the loss last night as chapped hands have to do with a blistering migraine. Like, sure, it didn’t help things, but ultimately you were waking up at 3 a.m. with pounding pain anyway after eating a plate of cheese, drinking three glasses of red wine, and playing E.J. Biggers for any reasonable stretch.

The media needs something to talk about. An angle. A narrative. This you know. I only checked in to the sports world a few times last week, having taken off for the baby, and was genuinely shocked to see that Sam Bradford’s contract discussion was all the rage. I don’t recall this being an A-level thread at any point this season, and yet last week, when I popped onto Twitter or turned on the radio, there’s parsing of Bradford’s every word about liking or not liking Philly, or Mike Missanelli grilling a bewildered Al Michaels about what he made of Bradford’s mostly inane non-comments. I thought I missed something, some watershed event that dictated that the third week of December had to be Bradford contract talk week. Nope. Just media ridiculousness.

This week it’ll be the 4th and 1 playcall and the apparent benching of DeMarco Murray, as favor as somehow swung back in Murray’s direction from the assorted humans in this fickle city.

Voila_Capture 2015-12-21_10-13-07_AM

Few things:

  1. Twitter lit up with outrage that Chip didn’t tap Murray in the short yardage situation, given Murray’s success in previous short yardage situations. Fair. But this is the same fan base and media apparatus that essentially campaigned for Kelly to bench the petulant and unproductive Murray, only to feign outrage when he actually benched him. What? Murray has been useless this season, and he has fought for yardage about as fierecly as a lamb testing the structural fortitude of a steel fence. Sure, maybe he nosed it a few times to see if it would just fall over, but he quickly resigned himself to respecting the barrier, or the defense, once it was apparent that moving it would require reasonable physical exertion. I’ll just lay here in the hay. Mathews has been the better, stronger runner all season. Leaving him in wasn’t the wrong decision. But the Eagles weren’t getting a first down given the playcall…
  2. The playcall. Fourth and inches, and the Eagles run a misdirection that leaves a wide receiver (albeit a good blocking one in Riley Cooper) as the lead blocker. 2014 DeMarco Murray may have been able to fall forward far enough to gain the first down here, but nothing indicates that the 2015 version would have done anything more than Mathews.
  3. The decision to not switch up the play after the Cardinals called timeout proved to be the wrong one, but it’s certainly not a damning indictment of Chip Kelly. It’s basically game theory. Everyone expects a change, but no one expects you to do the same thing… or do they? It’s an endless loop of oneupmanship. You can just keep rolling the dice on the best thing to do here, and given the fact that the Eagles typically have multiple options out of the same look or play, it’s not crazy that they would line up with the same call. But, it’s Christmas week, and we need something to blame for the 40-17 loss (!!!), so let’s blame this one play.

I can’t wait until Sal Pal weighs in on this and postulates about the alignment of the stars as a reason for Chip’s curious decision. Oh well I’ll tell you, Mike, there are some people in the Eagles’ front office who believe that the deranged mad man Chip Kelly was told by his astrologist that he must not blink in these scenarios. Jeffrey Lurie would never say it publicly, but decisions like this cost the Eagles millions – MILLIONS – in merchandise sales. Don’t think that goes unnoticed. Now, if we were to play this out, and Chip Kelly tries to hire his interplanetary guru, there are some who believe he will lose the Eagles locker room forever, leading to irreparable harm for the franchise and setting Mr. Lurie back years – YEARS, Mike! – in his quest for a Super Bowl ring. He has an Oscar, now he wants a ring. This is a high stakes game, and right or wrong, the football establishment frowns on this sort of outside-the-box thinking. Now, imagine if Marcus Mariota had been under center. We could tease that out, too, but it appears I’m now being shocked by a cattle prod and forced back into my cage until my next contractually mandated appearance. BE WELL, MICHAEL! BE WELLLLLLLLLLL!!!!