Well, well, well. What do we have here?

Lane Johnson was eager to pile on Chip Kelly after he left and complain about the grueling practices (this despite Chip’s predecessor being famous for overworking players in training camp). At the time, I called Lane a spineless jellyfish in a post that was met with an unusual amount of criticism in the comments and on Twitter. “Get off Lane Johnson’s back. At least he has the guts to say something.” “Kyle you are way off base here. At least he has the balls to say something. How many guys on this team refuse to comment?” “Kyle honestly, go fuck yourself.” 

It appears one person, one player, is on my side, however.

Here’s Jason Kelce on WIP’s Players Lounge show last night laying into Johnson’s comments:

“Although it may seem that we’re working harder, I thought that Chip and the strength staff actually did an outstanding job of scaling back practices,” Kelce said Monday on the 94WIP Players’ Lounge Show when asked if the team got weary because of Kelly’s practice regiment. “We had a number of practice that were scaled back in time. We had a number of practices where we put no pads on in the middle of the season — they tried to give us like bye weeks almost. We were still out there at practice, but we weren’t banging. I couldn’t be further on the opposite spectrum of this.”

“I mean, I love Lane Johnson to death,” Kelce continued, “But he’s only played for one head coach. How does he know the way other teams practice? His only mindset is on what other guys say and what other guys say — they might come in and think that they’re working hard and maybe they’re just getting older. I mean who knows? I can tell you this. When we had Andy Reid, training camp was a lot harder than when we had Chip Kelly.”

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“This is like one of the most pampered practice schedules I’ve been a part of to tell you truth,” Kelce said. “If I’m being honest, I think that we have massages, we have all these things put in place — we have smoothies. We have daily questionnaires. ‘How are you feeling today?’ Well dude, you’re gonna go out there and practice. So I think, quite honestly, some of these guys are a little pampered. I don’t want to get started on this, it really bugs me.”

Yes, I do remember that time.


Hear Kelce talk about Johnson.

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Kelce also mentioned the defense’s focus on stripping the ball, something I wrote about after Week 7. I don’t know why you’d read any other site.

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This is why I’ll defend Kelce even after some bad snaps– dude doesn’t make excuses, says what he thinks, isn’t afraid to call out teammates with what is obviously an unpopular opinion. Also, his beard.

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This is probably the part where Kelce tweets me and tells me he wasn’t calling Lane Johnson a “big baby.” That’s my wording, not his. Obviously.