Chip Kelly Addresses Eagles Injuries, Curry And Benn
PHILADELPHIA, PA (CBS)—Chip Kelly updated the health of his team, and also the continued quality play of Vinny Curry and his second-team wide receiver corps of Arrelious Benn and Ifeanyi Momah.
The encouraging news, Kelly said, is that rookie return man Josh Huff's shoulder appears okay after leaving the game on a big collision against New England Friday night. The X-rays were negative, but "He's in a sling right now. He probably will be out this week, but we haven't done anything further from that, so kind of what he feels like and see how he goes. I know the X-rays they took were negative. He's in a sling right now. He probably will be out this week, but we haven't done anything further from that, so kind of what he feels like and see how he goes."
Kelly said cornerback Cary Williams should be back this week after straining a hamstring on his pick-six against the Patriots. Riley Cooper (foot) had limited practice time and Jeremy Maclin (hamstring) is expected to return to practice Tuesday. Running back Chris Polk (hamstring) is still out.
As for what Kelly liked on Friday against the Pats, he said defensive end Vinny Curry is improving against the run.
"Vinny did a good job [against New England]," Kelly said. "He's getting better at that part from a technique standpoint in terms of what he's got to do in the run game. A lot of that has to do with other players are fitting on him. Sometimes you say this guy does a great job of penetrating and fitting up the field. If that's not the gap he's supposed to be in, we're going to get carved on a big run. Vinny's worked extremely hard on it.
"One thing you get out of Vinny is outstanding effort. A lot of the things he does are generated because of his effort. He made a huge effort play on Cary's interception down the field. He's improving, but obviously pitch production against the ones wasn't production like it was a week ago against the Bears and the twos and threes because you're going against a little better competition. But we're happy with Vinny's production and excited about having him."
Benn really helped himself on Friday, blocking one punt that led to an Eagles touchdown and scooping up a deflected pass off of Momah to score another.
"Yeah, [Benn] did a really nice job from a special teams standpoint," Kelly said. "Made a big catch on cleaning up for Mo on the one he dropped in the end zone. You're getting great effort out of Regis. It was good to get Jeff [Maehl] healthy and back out on the field. I thought besides the fumble, that he did a nice job. He's got a good skill set in terms of being able to release and not getting caught on the line of scrimmage. Mo gets better and better. The one thing with Mo is how many reps can you get him because he needs them all? As he gets them, he improves.
"So fighting to see who those last four, five, six are going to be. It's a matter of just getting those guys back out. For Jeff, it was just getting them healthy and getting them back out on the field. But I've seen improvement out of all those guys and these next few weeks will be huge."
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