Folks buying what Chip Kelly's selling

THE SEASON is one game old, yet the sales job seems to be over.

Chip Kelly has made the case that his product is worthwhile. He has made this to the Washington Redskins. He has made this to the National Football League. He has made this to the remaining wary Eagles fans and analysts, many who believed from his hire through the dog days of this summer that the frantic pace of his offense would sabotage his own team as much as it would the opponent.

"When you're wrong, you're wrong," Washington cornerback DeAngelo Hall said after Monday night's 33-27 loss to the Eagles. "And we were definitely wrong about this team."

You think?

Thirty plays in a quarter.

Fifty three in the first half?

You think?

"When the first quarter ended I think everybody on the offensive side of the ball was ready to head into the tunnel for halftime," center Jason Kelce said after practice yesterday. "We were like, 'Wow.' "

So were like, well, everyone from here to California and points in between. Watching the Eagles' offense in that first half was like attending a Springsteen concert these days: One song ends, there's a "1-2-3" and another song begins. You don't sit down. You don't stop cheering. There's all kinds of scrambling around out there, stagehands changing guitars, wide receivers going this way and that, and then . . . another blast of fun.

"It was fun to watch the Redskins' defenders sucking wind," linebacker Connor Barwin was saying yesterday. "Because we've had to do it for 2 months in the middle of the summer. It was fun to see someone else have to endure it."

This, of course, is the sale that matters. The one made to a team teeming with leftovers from the Andy Reid era, and free agents from other teams - like Baldwin. Players weaned on using most if not all of the play clock, on a lopsided ratio of passes to runs, on a package of players for this down and distance, that down and distance, etc., etc., etc.

And while each one of the Eagles professed his religious-like conversion to Kelly's doctrines this spring and summer, faith can be tested and dissolved by cold, hard, reality. They all believed in Andy Reid's way until just a few years ago - well, everyone but Terrell Owens - but even that devotion, built through more than a decade's worth of winning, near-championship football, dissipated as losses mounted.

And maybe it still will be that way for Kelly in the weeks and seasons to come. But if the way to sell something is to show that it works, then his first game as an NFL head coach was impressive. Especially if, as Kelly argued yesterday, it proves to be a faulty prototype and not a finished product.

"I felt like it was slow, to be honest with you," the coach said, and when a few people like me laughed, well, he didn't.

"I'm not joking," he said. "We've got to do a better job. We left the ball on the ground too much. We didn't get the ball to the officials. We could have sped things up from a process between plays. That's something we need to continue to work on."

Here's another thing they need to work on. Slowing it down effectively. Kelly admitted he's still working on this whole clock-eating concept, of having to "learn how to practice playing it the other way, really from a mindset standpoint, where we do everything 90 miles an hour, now you've got to go back to driving through the city streets."

I suspect he didn't expect this to be an issue in his first NFL game, on the road, against the defending division champions, and against one of the game's premier quarterbacks. That's right: Chip Kelly may have even impressed himself Monday night, although you'll never get him to say that.

But he did say this, when I mentioned that his players already had bought in so much to his philosophy, they sounded like salesmen after the game.

"Did you think it was going to happen this fast?" he was asked. "Do you think that has any quickening effect in terms of the team's effectiveness, that they have some ownership this early in the process?"

"Yeah, I didn't have any preconceived notions on how long it would take or where it would go from that standpoint," Kelly said. "I think in any organization, any business, any group, I think when you have total buy-in, when everybody is committed to the same visions and goals, you're ultimately going to be successful.

"That's what we constantly preach. We have a vision, a mission we're on. Our daily habits have to reflect the mission . . . Our job as a coaching staff is to make sure they understand what that vision is, show them how to get there . . .

"And then, honestly, just get out of their way and let them go do it."

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon