Eagles can win the NFC East if everyone is all in with Chip Kelly. That is big question. Photo by Todd Bauders/contrast photography.com

By Brian Baldinger

EXPECTATIONS!
For every Eagle fan this was an off-season to remember.

We have never experienced anything like it before in Eagles history and hopefully won’t have to go through one again for a long while.

Let’s recap. We fired our coach of 14 years and hired a new one along with almost 20 new coaches.

We heard sporadically from the head coach while at the NFL Combine.

Trades were consummated. Veterans were released. Free Agency brought in a boatload of mostly pedestrian players. Certainly no one with a name like Nnamdi.

Then it was on to something the NFL calls the OTA’s. An acronym for Organized Team Activities.

It was here that we caught a glimpse of the changes that have been implemented by Chip. Loud music plays throughout practice. They run their offense at warp speed and players seem to get tired…a lot…during practice.

And practice ends with their version of a McFlurry Shake. Cool stuff. And finally, the off-season ended with a mandatory mini-camp

While mini camp wrapped up I was catching my breath on the Amalfi Coast in Italy.

A true garden spot where the only crazy thing going on was the driving. You have two choices there if you are not careful..into the mountain..or over the cliff. But it was here while attending my good friends’ Curt Menefees wedding that I caught another glimpse into the growing puzzle that is Chip Kelly.

Also in attendance was NFL on FOX Howie Long. We are friends and worked together at FOX for 12 years. His middle son, Kyle, played for Chip this past season and was drafted with the 19th pick of the first round by the Chicago Bears.

Howie told me many things about Chip that he garnered on his own and things that his son had echoed about him. But it ALWAYS comes back to this comment, ”Chip is the smartest guy in the room.”

How many times have you Eagle fans heard this throughout this off season. I still don’t know what it means and I am not sure if it’s just cliche’ or if it truly is the truth. Howie volunteered that quote at least three times to me on that tranquil night in the Hamlet called Ravello.

It’s important that he is because the biggest difference in the NFL is coaching. It always has been.

In the two years between 1958 and 1960 the New York Giants lost two titanic coaches in Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry to be replaced by a guy named Allie Sherman. While the Packers and Cowboys won four Super Bowls and multiple championships; the New York Giants would endure a 17-year drought between playoff appearances.

Eagle fans know a lot about droughts. It has been 52 years now without a football championship of any kind. Meanwhile, in a 450 mile stretch from Foxborough, Massachusetts to Washington DC 13 Super Bowls have been banked.

I am miffed…I am pissed off. I am one who has expectations that are as lofty as the 13 Super Bowls that have been banked in the Northeast corridor since they started keeping track in 1967.

Let’s examine two places that hired coaches in modern times who also had high expectations.

In 1989 the Cowboys said goodbye to Tom Landry after an amazing 29 year run.

They had gone 12 years without a Super Bowl and panic had set in. Jerry Jones brought in his college teammate at Arkansas, Jimmy Johnson, to turn a 3-13 ragtag bunch into a mini dynasty.

With the swiftness of an outlaw gunslinger The JJ Boyz put pink slips on the desks of the old regime and had them out of the building before HR could react. And the roster was turned upside down and shaken frequently for the first 2 years.

A master plan was in place and executed with precision. And 24 years later its clear that the architect of the plan and ” the smartest guy in the room” was Jimmy Johnson.

During a locked out off season of 2011 the San Francisco 49ers won a recruiting contest for the services of Jim Harbaugh. The 49ers had seen the erosion of a Bill Walsh executed plan over 17 nondescript years and 32 year old President Jed York had witnessed enough. With much of the same roster that Mike Singletary had lost with, Harbaugh found a way to an NFC Championship game.

They would follow with a Super Bowl appearance. They are the talk of the league. Toughness, vision, talent, and supreme coaching has turned this ragtag bunch into what looks like perennial challengers.

So here we are with Chip in 2013.

The Eagle Organization; the Eagle Players; and the ardent Eagle Fan base should all share in one common lofty expectation. To win the NFC EAST

Yeah, I said it because I believe it. It starts with the uneasiness of key veteran players. Already Mike Vick is upset with the sharing of first team reps. DeSean Jackson has had meetings with Chip about what team he is running with.

Jason Avant has been notified that he must begin to learn a new position of nickel back.

This is a transition from Team Fluff to hard-nosed old school football where if you aren’t on the Chip Kelley Bus then you will be left in the dust.

And the best part is it doesn’t matter what your last name is and what accomplishments have been written in the teams media guide.

In both turnarounds in Dallas and San Francisco it started with a heavy emphasis in the run game.

The Cowboys became the most punishing running team in the league. The 49ers have held that moniker for the last two seasons. This is what the Eagles are going to become….a punishing and relentless running team. And with that the Eagles will learn how to protect the football.

If they cut their turnovers in half and become a top three rushing team in the NFL THEY WILL CONTEND for the NFC EAST Crown. Poppycock you jest?
The Redskins lead the league in rushing in 2012, cut their turnovers in half, and Oh by the way?

The Redskins were the NFC East winners in 2012

How does it sound Eagle Fans? ..2013 NFC East Champs.

Baldy says, ‘why not?”