Saturday Blitz
Fansided

Chip Kelly’s Pursuit of Marcus Mariota Means No Championship for Philadelphia, Just Like Oregon

By Caleb Calhoun

facebooktwitterreddit

The college football season is over, but the infatuation with the Chip Kelly system isn’t. If anything should have ended it, it would have been the national championship.

But the masses are still going strong in favor of Kelly’s system, as if it’s going to change the NFL when it still hasn’t changed college.

Now, with the news earlier this week that Kelly and the Philadelphia Eagles want to trade up to get Marcus Mariota, the goal of the Eagles is clear: Become the Oregon Ducks of the NFL.

Okay.

That means consistent winning seasons. It means consistent playoff appearances. And it also means one very sure thing: no Super Bowls.

Mariota showed in the national championship game along with the rest of the Oregon players what was already a concern: when another team gets physical with the Ducks, they fold.

This has been Oregon’s style for years. The cutting-edge system is enough to win lots of games for your team. But the minute you hit that team that simply hits you in the mouth, you’re relegated to nothing.

If it has consistently shown for Oregon, and it will show for Philadelphia. If a college football national championship gets too physical for that system, how do you think the NFL Playoffs will be? When it gets cold and you run up against defenses that are as fast as you and much more physical, all of a sudden that East-West speed is useless.

To be fair, anybody rooting for Mariota should hope he goes to Philadelphia. It is my personal opinion that he’ll fail anywhere else, but with the Eagles and that system, he’ll actually be a consistently winning quarterback.

Kelly can do that much.

More from College Football News

But the Eagles will never win a Super Bowl with that system, and it is likely they will never come out of the first round.

All Eagles fans will defend Kelly by noting that the Ducks were only 3 points away from a perfect season under him in 2010, barely losing to the national champion Auburn Tigers. But if you truly watched that game, it was never really close.

Auburn had complete control and allowed Oregon to get back in it. Once it was time to play again at the end of the game, they moved down the field at ease on Chip Kelly’s soft defense. And there was nothing he could scheme to stop it.

Being smart and ahead of the curve only gets you so far. Take Peyton Manning for example.

Manning has a strong case to be the greatest quarterback ever. But his team’s playoff troubles have nothing to do with him choking. They have everything to do with he has had finesse teams constructed to benefit the mind games he plays with teams throughout his career. And once the playoffs come, those finesse players get hit in the mouth and knock off everything Manning likes to do.

The one Super Bowl he won was the one time he had a halfway physical defense and a tough offensive line.

Think about Tom Brady. When the Patriots won their three Super Bowls, they did it with an elite defense and a rugged offensive line. Notice that ever since they have stopped prioritizing those things and prioritized more around Brady and opening up the passing game, they haven’t won it.

Then, this year, they got physical again, and where are they? Back at the Super Bowl.

Physical play with speed wins championships. One or the other builds a gadget program.

And a gadget program is all Philadelphia will be with Kelly.

Next: Top 12 Colleges by Players in the Pro Bowl

More from Saturday Blitz

Home/College Football News