Bill Belichick on Chip Kelly’s Firing: Former Eagles “aren’t really doing too”

Jeff Lurie wished Chip Kelly all the best in his future outside of Philadelphia.

The Eagles decision to fire Kelly on Tuesday with a game to go in the 2015 season floored Vermeil.

Fired Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly said Wednesday night that he was “grateful” and “blessed” to coach the team. I think he does a great job. It feels good to have the Eagles back it felt like they were not the Eagles team I grew up loving! There’s a lot of examples.

Kelly was 26-21 in three seasons with the Eagles after signing a five-year, $32.5 million contract to leave the University of OR in 2013.

“I don’t know how you build a program in one year”.

“Chip’s a great coach”. But in the end, he came up small in perhaps the most important aspect of his job.

Kelly, in his 25th year as a coach, leads active college coaches with 226 victories.

Hasselbeck said he knows Kelly “fairly well”, the result of both men coming from New England and Kelly recruiting Matt Hasselbeck’s younger brother, Tim, when Kelly was coaching at the University of New Hampshire.

Belichick certainly doesn’t take for granted his setup in Foxboro, where he is the longest-tenured coach in the league as a Pats mainstay since 2000.

Belichick dropped the mic with a surprising defense of Kelly’s personnel moves. “You always want anybody that has been a part of this program to have success later on”. Going forward, I think a much more collaborative approach between player personnel and coaching is the way to go. They do a good job. “I have a lot of respect for them”.

“Probably ’03, just because of everything”, Belichick said.

“You have to change the culture”, he said. “And I don’t think he utilized that enough or was proactive enough to really connect to the players”.

With a new coach comes a new philosophy, Belichick explained.

“That means you’re going to turn over a high percentage of the roster”, he said, “because the players that the other coach had don’t fit the new philosophy”. The coach that comes in usually has a different philosophy than the coach that left, so you have to try to implement that philosophy. He has not played bad, but again, the Eagles gave up a second round pick for him, so you would expect more production from your starting quarterback.

“I am deeply grateful to Jeffrey Lurie for allowing me to coach his Philadelphia Eagles for the past three seasons”. If you don’t have a calculator, he averaged 58.7 yards per game. “Not everything falls on Chip but at the same time, he was the one calling the shots so, unfortunately, he’s the one that’s got to take the brunt of it”. “I have nothing but good things to say about him”. “I knew that we would have an opportunity to do some things that I was accustomed to doing”.

“It’s never an easy decision to release a head coach or change head coaches”.