Nick Piccone
Today, Josh Huff said that the Cowboys knew what plays the Eagles were running because, well, they were calling out the plays when he lined up near their sidelines.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday in Philadelphia, Eagles wide receiver Josh Huff said there were times when he lined up near the Cowboys’ sideline and could hear Cowboys players calling out what play was coming.
That’s not good.
Eso no es bueno, ciertamente. What looked to me with the naked eye that Chip made absolutely no adjustments and just continued calling the same plays over and over combined with the fact that the Cowboys apparently knew what was coming make me think back to the Andy Reid days, where he game-planned very well, but couldn’t make in-game adjustments. This is the third time in the last calendar year that another team has publicly acknowledged [we’ll wait and see if the Cowboys acknowledge knowing what the Eagles were running] they knew what was coming.
In three years so far, Chip has had that same problem. He makes adjustments sometimes. Other times, he just wants his guys to do the same thing over until they do something good. Someone’s gotta tell him that type of playcalling is not going to go very far in today’s NFL. One would think, anyway.
UPDATE: Chip Kelly was asked about Huff’s claim during his press conference earlier today. Here’s what he had to say, according to Connor Orr of NFL.com.
“I just asked him about that, he didn’t say that to us,” Kelly said. “I just asked Josh, ‘do you think they knew our signals?’ and he said no. I said, Josh do you think they’re picking up on things and he said no.”
Kelly was also asked about the idea of predictability as it pertains to his offense, which is something that has been questioned in the past regarding his uptempo scheme.
“I think there’s certain things that everybody does that’s predictable from a tendency standpoint,” he said. “When you lineup in this formation 75 percent of the time you do this, 25 percent of the time you do this but there’s nothing I don’t think anybody does offensively or defensively that’s 100 percent of the time. The team you’re playing is 80 percent man coverage in this look but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna get man coverage every time. That’s just, everybody kind of does what they do, there’s a certain percentage that everybody does what they do but not always 50/50, you know what I mean?”
Well then, we all knew this was coming. Huff is doing his best Darrelle Revis impersonation by showcasing his backpedaling skills. After claiming that the Cowboys were calling out the Eagles’ plays and knew what was coming, Huff all of a sudden told Kelly that they didn’t know what was coming? Sure, that’s totally believable.
Whether or not the Cowboys knew what was coming doesn’t matter. If a team can execute properly, then a team knowing what is coming shouldn’t matter. Everyone knows the New England Patriots are going to throw the ball to Rob Gronkowski, does that make it any easier to stop? The Eagles knew the Atlanta Falcons were going to target Julio Jones a ton in their first game, we all know how that ended.
So just because a team may know what play is coming, that shouldn’t make an offense completely ineffective like Philadelphia’s offense was against the Cowboys. The team’s biggest issue now is execution, as they’ve mentioned over and over again. Whether they have the right personnel in place is another story for a different day. But maybe Chip Kelly should take a page out of his friend Bill Belichick’s book and make sure everyone just does their job.