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Serious rep-ercussions on Chip Kelly's team

Eagles backups-turned-starters benefit from multiple reps on the practice field.

Eagles head coach Chip Kelly. (David Maialetti/Staff Photographer)
Eagles head coach Chip Kelly. (David Maialetti/Staff Photographer)Read more

SO, IF you're keeping score, the injury list goes something like this:

One starting center, one starting left guard, one starting inside middle linebacker, one hole-punching running back, one all-purpose running back/returner, one safety, and, of course, now, one starting quarterback and the other starting inside linebacker, who is indisputably the defensive quarterback of your team.

Throw in the four-game suspension of right tackle Lane Johnson and it's actually quicker to list the starters who have played every game for the Eagles this season than those who have not.

And yet, here they are, 6-2, atop a division that has been hit much less by the injury bug and dealt with it much worse. RG3 went down in Washington and the season went with him. Tony Romo's cracked back created immediate fissures in a team that only a couple of weeks ago was being heralded by some as the class of the NFC.

It is one thing to brag about your readiness. It is quite another to prove it week after uneven week on the field. It is a bit amazing given how he was viewed as recently as last summer, that the specter of Casey Matthews standing in place of DeMeco Ryans next Monday night strikes more hope than fear among a populace not generally known for its sunny outlook.

But it is, indeed, always sunny in Philadelphia in the Chip Kelly era, thanks to a philosophy developed over years as a coordinator in New Hampshire and Oregon, and employed as the head coach of the Ducks and now, the Eagles.

Eagles players who have come from other teams and other systems often mention how many more reps they receive under Kelly's keep-em-busy practices.

"It's a byproduct of it," he said yesterday when I asked him whether he developed that philosophy as a coordinator/coach with UNH and at Oregon. "I'm a big rep guy or we're a big rep operation. That's what we believe . . . I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, and I do and understand.

"They have to do it. So you can't just talk about it and show it on film and say, 'Hey, I covered it.' No, you really didn't. They've got to go through it on the field and see it as close to game speed as possible."

It's a philosophy that undergoes a severe litmus test at the professional level, however, where rosters are limited and you just can't recruit solutions to your depth problems. And it was both instructive and foreboding in Kelly's second preseason that his second-team offense, with Mark Sanchez at quarterback, often outplayed the starters.

"You have to be conscious of the reps you have, obviously, because the roster is not the same size as in college," Kelly said. "But we've always been a big rep operation, and I think it pays off. One of the byproducts of it is it pays off if you're a 'two' or 'three,' because you get a lot more reps than they do in some other organizations. That's how we think about it philosophically. It's not solely built for, 'Hey, we can handle injuries,' because that's not what we're ultimately planning for, but I think it is a byproduct that when somebody that isn't a starter has to get in, it's not like they haven't gotten any reps."

The empirical evidence is all over the success of this season, from David Molk filling in for Jason Kelce to Matt Tobin stepping in admirably over the last month in place of Evan Mathis to Trey Burton filling in at running back late in one game to Matthews and Emmanuel Acho stepping up when Mychal Kendricks missed games earlier this season.

"They had an opportunity to get a lot of valuable snaps when Mychal was out, and play alongside DeMeco," Kelly said. "And now when they play alongside Mychal, it's not their first time. So it will benefit those guys that they've had that type of experience . . . Casey's been really, really consistent. I think he's got a very, very, very good understanding of what we're doing defensively . . . I think he's an instinctive football player. I've been really happy with how he's played in this season . . . "

Of uncertainty. At least by the conventional definition of the word. But if Kelly's methodology has underlined anything in the short time he has been here, it is that uncertainties do not have to be toxins if you've readied the antidotes ahead of time.

In his first regular-season action since Dec. 30, 2012, Mark Sanchez was 3-for-3 in the red zone. I asked Kelly whether he thought all those reps in practice breed confidence in games.

"We hope so," he said. "We really hope so. I think it's a byproduct. But I think our guys do play confident when they're out there."

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon