The Philadelphia Eagles unveiled their newest star running back (see what I did there?) DeMarco Murray, after he signed a five year, $42 million deal. Chip Kelly came along for the ride. In the span of 24 hours, he has spoken to the media more than he has in the last 2 1/2 months.
Here are some of the highlights from the press conference:
DeMarco Murray
Murray spoke about why he chose the Eagles: "I felt that this was a great opportunity for me to win a Super Bowl, at the end of the day," said Murray. "It wasn't about financial security or anything like that. Obviously, you want something that you deserve, something that is respectful. Those two things are important to me, and I was able to accomplish that. I think the Eagles have a great chance to win a Super Bowl."
He also discussed the role that his college roommate, Sam Bradford, had in recruiting him to come to the Birds:
Murray: Sam Bradford helped a lot. He's like a brother to me. We played a lot of great games at OU. He texted me right after he got here.
— Matt Lombardo (@MattLombardo975) March 12, 2015
Murray also said he took less to come to the Eagles, dispelling the notion that players do not want to play for Chip Kelly:
Chip says Murray was offered more money from another team. #Eagles
— Eliot Shorr-Parks (@EliotShorrParks) March 12, 2015
Chip Kelly
Chip Kelly again spoke to the media and offered a lot of telling insights into the decision behind getting both DeMarco Murray and Ryan Mathews:
"We obviously lost a tremendous running back in LeSean…So how do you replace that productivity? What’s available out there? And obviously we thought the three best guys were Frank [Gore] and DeMarco [Murray] and Ryan [Mathews]. And we wanted to target two of them. And we ended up with two of them."
Reports emerged that Kelly was dissatisfied with McCoy's tendency to dance around in the backfield too much, instead of doing the one cut downhill running style he prefers. Based on Kelly's comments, it seems like he found those runners in Murray and Mathews, describing them as physical, downhill runners: "Zone scheme, what we’re looking for, downhill, one-cut runner. Both him and Ryan I think possess those qualities. When you have a physical, downhill runner, you better have two of them because they’re gonna carry the ball, but they’re also gonna take a lot of physical shots, so we want to be able to spread out the carries."
Kelly emphasized the importance of splitting the carries among the Eagles running backs to limit their risk of injury:
Chip on workload: "I would hope DeMarco does not have to carry the ball 392 times this year. If he does, then we’re running it 692 times."
— Sheil Kapadia (@SheilKapadia) March 12, 2015
That has to be at least somewhat reassuring to fans (including yours truly), that were concerned about their respective injury histories and about the fact that Murray was coming off of 400+ touches last year, an ominous number for running backs historically.
Kelly also mentioned the need to use both Sproles and Polk, which is somewhat surprising. Given the amount they invested in Murray, Mathews and Sproles, many assumed that Polk would be the odd man out.
Chip Kelly acknowledged that the Eagles discussed trading every player on the roster during the offseason:
Chip Kelly:"If we were willing to trade LeSean McCoy and Nick Foles, then I think everyone on this team we’ve had very hard discussions on.”
— Zach Berman (@ZBerm) March 13, 2015
The dramatic reshaping of the Eagles roster continues. We are only two days into free agency and the team is completely different than it was when the 2014 season ended. Kelly promised that the Eagles were not finished: "We’re not done…We have the draft coming up, and there’s other opportunities. …We feel very comfortable where we are. It’s March. We still have the draft. We still have a lot of other opportunities to add to this football team. So this isn’t the final product in terms of putting 90 guys together."
So stay tuned, who knows what he will do next.
Patrick Causey is a writer at Eagledelphia.com and can be followed on Twitter at @PhillySportsJD
