Hurry-up hurts Eagles at end of Chargers loss

Chip Kelly is renowned for his mastery of the spread offense.

But as he adjusts to life in the NFL, he's quickly realizing some elements of his preferred coaching style may need to be tweaked. With the Eagles down 30-27, they drove down the field quickly before kicking a field goal to tie the game with just under two minutes left.

That gave the Chargers enough time to move down the field to win the game with a field goal of their own, with little time left on the clock.

“I was trying to score; that’s all on me, that’s my call,” Kelly said on WIP's Morning Show in Philadelphis, via Philly.com. “I didn’t want it to leave it in the hands of, it’s a tie ballgame. If you score, you’re up four. You got to drive a length of the field to try to score a touchdown."

Kelly's situational time management came into question because it could be seen that a better technique to spend more time on offense, so that if you have to kick a game-tying field goal it would be with too little time for San Diego to respond, sending the game into overtime.

To Kelly's credit, he took credit for the decision.

"When you look at it in hindsight, maybe we should have bled the clock and not giving them enough time to come down and do it," Kelly said. "You learn from those situations. But we were trying to score seven, not three. We felt like we had three, and just thought we had the opportunity to put one in there, and we didn’t get it. We didn’t capitalize.”

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Aaron Wilson covers the Ravens for The Baltimore Sun.

Aaron Wilson
Aaron Wilson covers the NFL for National Football Post, his second stint at the Post. He has previously written for Pro Football Talk and FOX Sports-Scout. Entering his 13th year covering the Baltimore Ravens, he's a beat writer for The Baltimore Sun. Wilson has also covered the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans.

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