McMullen on the Eagles: Kelly Too Cavalier About Mediocrity

PHILADELPHIA (973espn.com) - The sample size is now large enough to declare the 2015 Philadelphia Eagles a mediocre football team, something head coach Chip Kelly was a little too cavalier about the day after the team's 20-19 defeat to another one of the NFL's ho-hum teams, the Miami Dolphins.

The offensive line served as Kelly's sounding bound for the nondescript nature of his team.

"I think that's the question for everybody in this league," Kelly said when asked how his blockers could look so good one week in Dallas and be dominated by Ndamukong Suh the next. "Every week is a different week. Every opponent is a different opponent. With the exception of about four or five teams right now."

In this case acceptance is a defeatist attitude and whether Kelly set out to do it or not, he unveiled a clear demarcation line in the NFL between the haves and the have nots and he put his team on the wrong side of the line.

"I think everybody's kind of doing the same thing," Kelly said. "You look one week and they kind of look like gangbusters, and then the next week, it's not so much. Green Bay was out and won six straight; now they've lost three straight."

Equating what he has built thus far in Philadelphia to what is going on in Green Bay is insulting. Despite their recent hiccups, the Packers remain one of the NFL's best organizations and one others try to emulate.

Conversely, the only thing others are learning from the Eagles is to make sure you don't give one man with little NFL experience the power to reshape an entire organization.

Furthermore if everybody is indeed "kind of doing the same thing," what exactly is Kelly offering this organization?

He was sold to Philadelphia as an innovator on the cutting edge of the advances in offensive football yet the strength of his team is now on the defensive side as he has systematically robbed himself of talent in a weird experiment to prove a system and a culture could be the star of an NFL team.

If Jeffrey Lurie isn't having buyer's remorse over handing the keys of his team to a repetitive play caller with no experience in the realm of personnel, he's not the businessman we thought he was.

Ex-Eagle Barrett Brooks had this damning critique of the Eagles head coach Monday on The Sports Bash: "I think Dan Campbell out-coached Chip Kelly, an interim coach with four games of NFL experience."

If that's the case maybe the Eagles are mediocre because their head coach is unexceptional.

-John McMullen covers the Eagles and the NFL for 973ESPN.com. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen