Chip Kelly admits last 3 weeks have shaken Eagles' confidence

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His team’s been battered and embarrassed and humiliated. In the span of 12 days, the Eagles blew a 13-point lead at home to a last-place team that had just fired its coach and was on the road for a third straight week, lost at home by 28 points to another last-place team and then lost by 31 points to yet another last-place team on national TV.

It may not be the worst three-game stretch in Eagles history, but it’s close. The Eagles hadn’t lost consecutive games by at least 28 points in 50 years, and they had never allowed 45 points in consecutive games.

So 4-4 has turned into 4-7. The Cowboys and 49ers are the only NFC teams with fewer wins. Chip Kelly knows his team is on the brink of disaster, and on Monday he talked about the mindset of his locker room as the Eagles prepare to head to Foxboro, where they haven’t won since 1987.

“I think any time you're not successful, you worry about the mindset of your team going in,” Kelly said.

“Part of that that we talk about all the time is: Execution fuels emotion. If we're not executing, then we're not going to play with a lot of confidence. That's just human nature. If you're going out and not having success, then it's tough for you to say, ‘We've got a lot of confidence in this.’

“But I've seen this team this year play with confidence. We played with confidence when we were playing down in Dallas. I think you had it in all phases of the game in that game, and that is the fleeting thing. You go from one week to the next, and the teams that are really good can consistently do that. That's what we need to do. We need to be consistent in that approach.”

It wasn’t too long ago that the Eagles appeared to be a .500 team that if anything was underachieving.

After eight games, the midway point in the season, the Eagles were 4-4. Their defense was ranked 10th in the NFL in points allowed, and their offense was ranked ninth in yards per game.

They were struggling to find consistency on both sides of the ball, but they were at least competitive. Three of their four losses were by three or fewer points, and they had won four of their last six going into that home game against the Dolphins.

Since then? Catastrophe is a fair word.

And Kelly acknowledged that the events of the last few weeks have shaken the team’s confidence.

“I think any time you lose, that is the byproduct of it,” he said. “I think they're disappointed in how they've performed and how they've played. You look at the results and they understand that.

“They’re just disappointed. I think they want this as much as anybody wants this, and I think they train that way and prepare that way. I think they’re disappointed with the outcome.”

Kelly was asked numerous times Monday why things fell apart so quickly and so thoroughly the last two weeks.

When you’ve been outscored 107-34 over the last 11 quarters, it’s not going to be one thing.

“I say this all the time and truly mean it: It's not one thing (where) if we fix ‘this’, we’re good, everything is straight and the score's going to be changed the other way,” Kelly said.

“There are breakdowns that occur that have to be corrected. Sometimes it's communication. Sometimes it's a physical breakdown where we may miss a tackle or a block or we don't catch a pass. It's a physical thing, it’s not a mental thing.

“But there are too many of them right now for us to be consistent as a football team. There are times offensively when we moved the football, but we need to string more drives together. We just can’t string a drive together and then go out the next time on the field and have a touchdown drive and a three-and-out. It's really just a consistency thing.”

So now what?

Sam Bradford could be back by Sunday, so there’s that. Eric Rowe will move into the starting lineup at corner in place of Nolan Carroll, out for the year with a broken ankle.

But are there any other changes in the offing?

Kelly wouldn’t rule it out, but he also indicated that he’s not the sort to make wholesale changes just for the heck of it.

“We'll look at everything, obviously, when we get back out on the field on Tuesday,” Kelly said. “But there is nothing drastic at this point in time that we're going to do.

“We have a set roster. There are not guys on the street right now that we're saying, ‘Hey, let's go get these six guys and flip it out.’ There is a reason those guys are available at this point in time.

“Yeah, there are backups and we've told those guys that there is an opportunity to go get some playing time. But you also have to merit playing time. It's not just change for the sake of change, and just flip this out. They also have an opportunity every day when we're out here training Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to show us they deserve more playing time.

“We’re going to do what we do. As we prepare and get ready to go play the Patriots, there are not fundamental changes. We're not going to put the wishbone in and say, ‘Hey, let's change what we do offensively,’ or, ‘Now we're going to put in a three-three stacked defense this week and try to out-scheme people.’

“You're not going to out-scheme people this week by changing your schemes at this point in time during the season. I think that there's an opportunity in front of us, and we all understand what our opportunity is in front of us, and we'll prepare and go do that.”

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