EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Go fast, go fast, go fast.
That was pretty much Chip Kelly’s offensive motto during the last three years in Philadelphia. Everything was fast. Ideally, more plays, quicker snaps, more opportunities to score.
Kelly didn’t care about time of possession or what his quick-tempo offense might do to his exhausted defense. He didn’t care what opposing defenses looked like or if his team was going to run the right play.
It was all about going faster.
So fittingly, on Tuesday, Kelly became the fastest to get booted out of the Eagles’ head coaching job since Marion Campbell in the mid-80s.
And with Kelly gone, on Sunday, the Eagles finally slowed things down in their 35-30 win over the New York Giants (see Instant Replay).
“I think it helped,” said quarterback Sam Bradford when asked if the slower tempo helped improve efficiency. “I think we really kind of got into a rhythm there, especially in the one drive in the fourth quarter. I think it just eliminated a lot of the negative plays you’ve seen this year. For the most part today, we were getting the right plays called against the right looks. I think that’s why we were able to be more consistent and more efficient today.”
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Interim coach Pat Shurmur led the Eagles into the regular season finale. And despite having just five days between Kelly’s firing and the game at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Shurmur tweaked Kelly’s game plan just enough to find some more balance in the offense.
Sure, the Eagles still went fast sometimes.
But not all the time.
Perhaps the biggest change on Sunday was Shurmur’s decision to audible at the line of scrimmage more than the team had done under Kelly (see 10 observations). While audibles were technically a part of Kelly’s offense, they were utilized much more with Shurmur calling the plays.
“We audibled throughout,” Shurmur said. “I think that was sort of the idea. We wanted to line up and we have a handful of plays. We tried to get into the best one. It’s part of what we did. We probably just utilized it a little more than we have.
“Every offense has a curl flat. We didn’t change the name of that in the last five days. We just tried to utilize it. The one thing that’s important is we have a quarterback who is extremely smart. We trust him. So you don’t have to be a play behind with Sam.”
On Sunday, the Eagles had two very lengthy touchdown drives, one on either side of halftime. One was a 16-play, 80-yard drive. The other was a 13-play, 91-yard drive.
Here’s the part that probably had Kelly ripping out his hair and throwing his remote control from his couch: The Eagles didn’t go very fast on either of those drives. The first took 6:23 off the clock, the second took 6:12. They were the two longest drives of the 2015 season and just the third and fourth times the Eagles surpassed the six-minute mark on a drive this year.
“I think Coach Shurmur did a pretty good job of play-calling, keeping them off balance,” said tight end Zach Ertz, who had 152 receiving yards. “We’ve been in some situations where we were going to let them set up in their defense and then there were some situations where we set up and just go fast; whatever the play is, we’re going to run it, no matter if you’re in the right defense or not, we’re going to run it and try to bust one. You know Coach Shurmur is more from the West Coast, more old-school style football, so there were a little more situations where it was, ‘OK, see what situations they’re in,’ and then call a play.”