On Monday night, the Philadelphia Eagles lost to the Atlanta Falcons in a 26-24 game that, for most of the contest, wasn’t nearly as close as the final score would indicate. Like their division rival New York Giants, they found themselves within reach of a victory despite being outplayed on both sides of the ball for the balance of the game. And much like the Giants, the Eagles dug their own graves with overly conservative decision making from their head coach.
Tom Coughlin’s Giants, petrified of a Tony Romo comeback, tried to bleed as much clock as possible when they had a first-and-goal, running halfback dives and telling their back not to score. Of course, then they stopped the friggin’ clock on a third down pass and kicked a field goal, giving Romo enough time to complete the very comeback that scared the Giants so. (Never mind that a touchdown would have given the Giants a nearly insurmountable two-score lead. I SAID NEVER MIND THAT.)
Kelly’s Eagles weren’t trying to protect a lead, but finish up a fourth-quarter comeback. Down two points, with just under three minutes to play and a fourth down with inches to go at the Falcons’ 26-yard line (and with all three timeouts remaining), Kelly went for a 44-yard field goal, which kicker Cody Parkey missed. Even if he had made the field goal, the Falcons also had three timeouts and would have had two and a half minutes to get in position for their own game-winning field goal. Probability favors a fourth-down try for multiple reasons, not least of which is that it shouldn’t be all that hard to get one yard.
Both Kelly and Coughlin gave away chances at victory because they were too afraid to play aggressively and be criticized for it later. But Chip Kelly isn’t supposed to be mentioned in the same breath as Tom Coughlin, because for all of his bizarre personnel decisions, his playcalling and in-game philosophy were always considered progressive and on the cutting edge; they certainly were at Oregon. But Kelly’s not as different from more established coaches as you may think.
Football Outsiders has a stat called Aggressiveness Index, which ranks and measures coaches’ decisions on fourth down situations, and it pegged Kelly as only the 27th-most aggressive coach in the league last season. At 26th, none other than Thomas Richard Coughlin.
To be fair to Kelly, FO points out that there were a couple moments last season where Kelly was unfairly punished by a blindspot in their calculations, but it’s unlikely that Kelly would have vaulted all the way to the top of the leaderboard based on one or two plays. The most telling stat? Kelly didn’t opt to go for it on fourth down in a single long-field-goal situation.
That’s exactly the kind of spot in which Kelly was known for pushing the envelope in college, but in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer before his first season with the Eagles, Kelly said that his choices to go for it weren’t actually choices, but necessity.
“If you don’t have a guy that can kick a long field goal, what are you going to do when the ball is on the 37-yard line?” he said. “Will you kick a 52-yarder or are you going to punt it? If [the punt] goes into the end zone, you have a net of 17 yards. Or do you go for it because you have a good defense and you’re not averse to putting them on the field on the 37-yard line?”
So now the internal logic is all laid out. Chip Kelly’s offense is still a pretty thing, still great for tempo, and his commitment to health science has kept his team healthier than others. But when it comes to fourth down, he’s not too much different from the dinosaurs of the league, like Tom Coughlin.