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Murphy: Eagles D needs more addition than Kelly's subtraction

The addition by subtraction talking points seem to have resonated with the fans and media here in town. That's understandable. Chip Kelly did not do himself, or his players, many favors over his last year in town. There are plenty of valid criticisms of his scheme, of his tempo, of his personality, of his coaching methods, of his insistence on calling it training instead of practice, etc.

Still, the one critique I hear more often than most is the one that invites the most skepticism.

Something to the effect of, "The Eagles defense won't be nearly as bad because it won't be on the field nearly as much thanks to the offense's tempo and lack of time of possession."

(Though perhaps in more fluid English.)

Of all of the philosophical quibbles I had with Kelly in terms of scheme and tempo, the effect on the actual play-to-play performance defense was near the bottom. In other words, they did not fail to get off the field on Third Down X, or fail to stop Big Play Y, because they were tired or worn down or whatever. At least, not to a large enough extent to make addition by subtraction a significant reason for optimism.

There's no doubt Kelly's tempo exacerbated some of the Eagles' shortcomings. First and foremost, it does not make mathematical sense to play an up-tempo offense if the other offense is better than your offense (generally speaking at least -- more specifically, it doesn't make sense if Opp Offense + Your Defense > Your offense + Opp defense). But there isn't much evidence for the offense's tempo making the Eagles' defensive players any worse than they would have been otherwise.

Consider this: Last year, the Eagles' defense was on the field for a league-high 203 drives, just two more than the Super Bowl champion Broncos, seven more than the team the Broncos beat for the title, and five more than two of the stouter defenses in the league in Houston and Denver.

True, the Eagles numbers on a per-drive basis were not as ugly as their overall marks. That said, they were still ugly. They allowed 31.6 yards per drive, eighth-most in the NFL, and 1.99 points per drive, which was 11th most. Opponents scored on 36 percent of their drives, which ranked 17th.

None of those marks were markedly different from their averages in 2012, when the Andy Reid Regime 1.0 was in charge. Then, they allowed 2.14 points per drive and 30 yards per drive and opponents scored on 39 percent of drives (maybe the only reason that unit outperformed 2015's in yards per drive was their opponents' average starting field position was the 31.8 yard line, the highest in the league).

The 2012 season is kind of the inconvenient truth for those who are more than happy to wag their tail and lap up the talking point that holds Kelly responsible for the current state of affairs of this organization. I was not a fan of his scheme or his tempo, and I certainly wasn't a fan of Billy Davis as a defensive schemer/playcaller. But Kelly's three seasons (10-6, 10-6, 6-9) are still better than Reid's final three with the Eagles (10-6, 8-8, 4-12). That doesn't mean that Kelly was a good NFL coach or talent evaluator, or that the Eagles were wrong to part ways with him. But just because he didn't have what it takes to fix this thing doesn't mean that things were better before he got here, or that things wouldn't be as bad or worse if he'd never come.

What's unclear is whether the Eagles have deluded themselves into thinking that Kelly's subtraction really was the biggest addition the franchise needed, or whether they have simply deluded a media and fan base whose pre-existing distate for Kelly's persona left them more than willing to help carry the pitchforks.