Center Jason Kelce wants Eagles to snap out of it

THE BURDEN of the Eagles' offensive line struggles this season sits heavily upon the shaggy shoulders of veteran center Jason Kelce.

Kelce lamented after Sunday's 20-19 loss to Miami that he had played the worst game of his career. By Tuesday, when the Eagles gathered to begin preparing for this week's visit from Tampa Bay, Kelce had revised that opinion a little. But Kelce, 28, still took himself to task for not giving his less-experienced linemates the stable, solid leadership they need to function smoothly.

After an agonizing, frittered-away opportunity like Sunday's, Kelce said: "You go home and you watch the film. Physically, I don't think it was the worst game of my career, after watching the tape. Mentally, there were a lot of mistakes, and really, the mistakes are drastic ones.

"You just go back and you reevaluate it and you take all the emotions out, or you try to, and refocus on and try and realize what you need to do to help not only yourself but everybody else get better."

The Eagles' offense played its best first quarter of the season Sunday, building a 16-3 lead, then began an abrupt, steep decline that saw starting quarterback Sam Bradford go down and out on a third-quarter sack, suffering a concussion and Grade II AC sprain to his left shoulder. Only three more points were generated the rest of the day.

"Once we start making mistakes, getting holding penalties, false starts and things like that, guys start going into panic mode," Kelce said. "People feed off of that . . . Then they lose track of their fundamentals . . . When I tend to make the right (blocking) calls, when I tend to not make mistakes . . . When I tend to make everybody feel comfortable, mistakes don't happen, usually."

Kelce was whistled for three penalties and he flung a shotgun snap over Bradford's head.

"I think (setting the tone is) my job . . . It's not like I've got to get with 'em each individually and coach 'em up or anything like that, I've just got to not make mistakes," Kelce said. "Right now, I think I have 11 penalties through the season. The next closest center with penalties has seven, so I've got almost twice as many as the next guy down.

"That's really what's got to happen. I've got to eliminate those mental mistakes, the false starts, bad snaps. If we eliminate those things, I firmly believe we'll get everything fixed."

Kelce, named to the Pro Bowl last season, gave an example of how he overthought Sunday. He wanted to stop Miami defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh from successfully splitting Kelce and right guard Matt Tobin. Kelce tried to fire out and hit Suh a glancing blow, knocking him off-balance, into the grasp of Tobin. Kelce said he missed Suh entirely, allowing the $114 million disrupter a clear lane to the backfield.

"Instead of trying to do more, just go back to the basic fundamentals, go back to the basic steps, how to surface blocks," Kelce said. "Don't try to overdo it, just try to block the guy."

Tobin and Kelce said Suh wasn't all that hard to handle early, until they knocked him down on a combo-block. "We threw him out of there pretty hard," Kelce said. "After that, it seemed like he kind of hunkered down and stopped 'flowing' (with the blocks)."

Suh shut down the Eagles' running game and delivered persistent pass-rush pressure up the middle, making seven solo tackles, three behind the line of scrimmage, to go with a sack and three hurries. The Eagles gained 40 of their 83 rushing yards in the first quarter; the rest of the day, they ran 24 times for 43 yards, 1.79 yards per carry.

Playing this season between first-year starters Allen Barbre at left guard and Tobin at right guard has ratcheted up the pressure on Kelce, who spent his previous four seasons between Todd Herremans and Even Mathis, guards with more experience than their center.

"He's a guy that's really hard on himself," said tackle Lane Johnson, who described how Kelce could more freely use his athleticism to get outside with Mathis or Herremans behind him.

"Being so used to playing with Todd or Evan, being in rhythm with those guys for four years, and going out there with Tobin and Al . . . that's probably the biggest adjustment," Johnson said. "He uses his speed well to get to the outside edge, but sometimes he'll give up too much penetration."

Kelce seemed to reference this: "I really don't think I'm necessarily getting blown up in certain situations. I think that, although it might appear that way, there are certain play calls where I'm trying to go more laterally, I'm trying to capture an edge, and I go too far."

Kelce said he has had plenty of time to adjust to Barbre and Tobin. It's his job to make the unit perform.

"It's been that way since I've been here. The center's the quarterback. You're controlling that many different pieces.," Kelce said. "That's why you see guys play the center position a long time for some teams, even when they're not physically as dominant - the team trusts them, the players trust them, and I think when they make everybody else feel comfortable, and they know that this guy's going to put us in a good position . . . It tends to put other people at ease. That's been what I've been doing since I got here, I've just been doing a really bad job this year."

Offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur indicated Tuesday that he hadn't been that surprised to see Miami defensive tackles Suh and Earl Mitchell give his interior linemen a hard time.

"I think that's what makes Kelce a great player, is that he can self-analyze," Shurmur said. "(Sunday) he was probably overstating maybe a handful of plays, because he did a lot of really good things, too, against a couple of tough matchups. That tandem of defensive tackles is about as good as you're going to face, and (the Eagles' linemen) were in there battling.

"That's why guys will tend to have long careers and be really good players, because they're hard on themselves when a few bad plays happen."

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