I think there is nothing more startling this season—so far anyway—than the Eagles playing two sub-.500 teams in the span of five days and surrendering 45 points to each. And getting routed in each game. But I wouldn’t take the easy way out and infer what so many are: that Chip Kelly’s going to parachute into some great college job and abandon the Eagles five weeks from now.
Now, it’s easy to be burned by predicting what wise coaches with options will do. Remember the Nick Saban saga nine years ago? In his second year as Dolphins savior, Saban said with three weeks left in the season: “I’m not going anywhere.” With a week left, Saban said: “I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.” Three days after the season, standing on the Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa, Saban said: “What I realized in the last two years is that we love college coaching.” So do not ignore the Kelly-to-USC chatter, or the Kelly-to-anywhere chatter. Just as I didn’t think Saban was going anywhere (he told me so, twice, in the last month before he left), I don’t think Kelly is going anywhere either, because I don’t think he’s a quitter.
When he was at Oregon, it wasn’t as if he was necessarily in the place where he could see himself coaching forever. When he got the Eagles’ job I thought part of it was for the challenge of competing on a level playing field, not one where the corporate and alumni world can make such a difference in winning and losing. One more observation: Had Saban signed Drew Brees in 2006 instead of listening to team medics who told him Brees’ shoulder surgery would make that season iffy for the quarterback, there’s a good chance the Dolphins would have at least one Super Bowl in the last decade and Saban would still be in Miami. And if Sam Bradford had worked out and played great—there is still time, but Bradford hasn’t played well enough to erase the doubts people had on him before the March trade to Philadelphia—these questions about Kelly’s future would be moot. Gut feeling: Unless Jeffrey Lurie gets Tennessee’s first-round pick for Kelly, and Kelly’s serious about re-starting his NFL life in Tennessee next year (with his former Oregon QB, Marcus Mariota), Kelly stays. With Lurie’s full support.