Chip Kelly Says Bye Week Not An Excuse To End Win Streak
By Kevin McGuire
The Eagles snapped their home losing streak on Sunday and now are sitting atop of the NFC East this close to Thanksgiving for the first time since the 2010 season. Now, believe it or not, the Eagles really are the team to beat in the division. The Eagles are tied with the Cowboys for the best point differential in the division (+16) and they get a week off to prepare for their next game, against the Arizona Cardinals on December 1, and a chance to win back-to-back home games for the first time since December 2009.
With a bye week in the middle of the games though, Eagles head coach Chip Kelly will have to find ways to continue the momentum built on this recent three-game winning streak.
"We knew it was coming up," Eagles head coach Chip Kelly said during his regularly scheduled Monday press conference. "We knew how we were going to handle it and we've had the same schedule in place since June, so be it."
Kelly's predecessor in Philadelphia, Andy Reid, established a great track record after a bye week. The bar is set high for Kelly, but how the bye week impacts a season and its momentum is not exactly a huge concern for the new Eagles head coach.
"If you come out after a bye and don't play well, if you blame it on we were on a roll and had to take a break, you're giving yourself built-in excuses, and that's not what this deal is all about," Kelly said. "We don't make excuses. We knew we were going to start the season and play three games in 11 days. That is the way it is. That's the way we roll with it, and move up. So I don't think of it from that standpoint."
This is all a new experience for Kelly of course. Kelly has gone through bye weeks at the college level but the way a college football schedule and an NFL schedule are set up are different in a number of ways. The NFL plays more games; 16 games opposed to 12 in a regular season before conference championship scenarios, and the NFL schedules a team's bye weeks for them while colleges have some flexibility over certain aspects of their schedule, giving them an opportunity to work in an extra bye week at times.
"Well, bowl weeks were definitely different," Kelly explained. "We played in four BCS games and they all occurred in January. So I think we had somewhere between 31 and 37 days off. That's an entirely different animal in its own right. And when we had bye weeks in college, we used it as improvement weeks."
One thing that is different about bye weeks in the NFL is the players' independence and mobility.
"Our guys aren't high-tailing out of there and flying across the country and going home and doing all those other things," Kelly said about his college coaching days. "We gave them the weekend off. But we usually practiced two or three days during that week, a Tuesday and Thursday, they were off Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then come back the following Monday to start."
When the Eagles do return to the field against Arizona it is possible they could still have the lead in the NFC East. Dallas visits the New York Giants this weekend, with the Giants looking to build on a four-game winning streak. Other than the Eagles, the Giants have been the hottest team in the division. A win for the Cowboys would create a tie at the top of the NFC East, but Dallas owns the head-to-head tiebreaker at the moment against the Eagles.
For more Eagles news and updates, visit Eagles Central.
Kevin McGuire is a Philadelphia area sports writer covering the Philadelphia Eagles and college football. McGuire is a member of the FWAA and National Football Foundation. Follow McGuire on Twitter @KevinOnCFB. His work can be found on Examiner.com.
