Things have not been going well in Philadelphia. Chip Kelly’s Eagles are 0-2 and are now facing a New York Jets team with a top tier defense. It doesn’t look like things will be getting any better anytime soon. Kelly is under tremendous fire and criticism for many of the off-season moves he made with the roster. The acquisitions of Demarco Murray and Kiko Alonso have just blown up in his face.
Coming over from Buffalo, Alonso, a line backer, joined the team via trade for LeSean McCoy even though Alonso had missed all of last season with a torn ACL. It was a huge gamble by Chip to try and get one of his old guys from Oregon. It turns out that gamble is in serious jeopardy. Alonso just re-injured the same knee in last week’s game and is now set to miss time while rehabilitating. It is the kind of injury that could turn out to be more serious as time goes on and he could end up missing most of the season.
Alonso will not be alone in the trainer’s room, newly acquired running back DeMarco Murray now has an injured hamstring. He is inactive for the game against the Jets. Murray, last season’s offensive player of the year, was intended to fill in for the absence of McCoy. Now even more pressure will be placed on quarterback Sam Bradford who is already Chip’s most controversial acquisition of them all. Bradford had not played in an NFL game in nearly two years before the start of this season. Having torn two ACLs in back to back years, he missed nearly every game of the last two seasons while on the St. Louis Rams. Bradford was acquired via trade for quarterback Nick Foles and many have been scratching their heads since. Originally it was believed that Bradford would be used by Kelly as trading currency to move up in the draft earlier this year. It was no secret that Kelly wanted Oregon’s Marcus Mariota. Kelly coached the quarterback Mariota while he was at Oregon and no one can run Chip’s system better than he can. Having failed to secure a trade for the future star QB, the Eagles are now left with one of the most injury prone quarterbacks in the recent history of the league. Bradford has great talent when he is available to play but has always been sidelined due to injury. And because of his lack of playing time over the last two years, the rust and inexperience have shown up tremendously in Philly’s first two games.
One thing is certain. If the Eagles do not start winning soon, things are going to get ugly in Philadelphia. After an extremely controversial off-season and a poor start to the season, it is going to be hard for Kelly to regain the trust he was originally garnished with.