THE SUPERGENIUS of Chip Kelly, SUPERGENIUS: A Progress Report

Well, that season of experiment didn’t end well.  

Relevant:

• DeMarco Murray at least had a per-carry average over five yards. Alas, this was in five carries and included a fumble that essentially ended Philadelphia’s season. Murray concludes the meaningful portion of the Eagles season having averaged 3.5 yards a carry.  Paying a lot of money for running backs coming off high workload seasons is a definitive sign of a bad organization, and this was not an exception to the rule.
• Sam Bradford’s numbers look superficially respectable.  But the QBR — which adjusts for, inter alia,  short yardage completions in garbage time that improve raw stats while contributing negative value to the team — shows him at a rancid 22.1.  That’s a little unfair, in that his receivers had multiple drops (a mitigating factor all year for Bradford, although not Kelly.)  On the other hand, Rodgers and Wilson and especially Newton aren’t exactly working with the 2000 Rams, and they’re able to run offenses with far greater efficiency; after 5 years of submediocrity it can’t all be the surrounding talent. What’s scary for Eagles fans is that Bradford probably has been just good enough to be not good enough again next year.

Kelly will apparently be back and with his track record I don’t think that’s a bad decision, but one would hope that he understands that he needs a lot of help putting the roster together.

This can serve as an NFL open thread. I’ve heard that Murray Chass has seen Peyton Manning’s back acne or something, which is surely the greatest scandal there absolutely ever was since under-inflated footballs.