When the Eagles report for training camp on July 22, things will have a very different look than past years.
Andy Reid will be in Kansas City, marking the first time since 1999 that he won’t be running practices for the team. The team will also be holding camp at their headquarters in Philadelphia, ending a 70-year run of going away for camp.
Chip Kelly, who will be overseeing his first camp as an NFL head coach, said that the changes were made because of all the infrastructure in place at the team’s facility -- “Why would you move everything to go somewhere else?” -- and not because he has a desire to mark his turf in his first year as the team’s coach.
“I’m not that deep. I don’t ever think that way,” Kelly said, via the team website. “I don’t think of signature moments and those things. We’re just trying to give our team a chance to envision what they have to do. I get up every day, and we have a vision of what this thing’s supposed to look like, and we keep working towards that vision. I think sometimes if that’s the way you think, then you may be a little full of yourself, to be honest with you. Maybe if you had a bunch of guys with you that were bucking the system, you would say ‘This isn’t the way it’s going to be.’ But again, these guys have been fantastic since day one, so there hasn’t been a time where I’ve had to say ‘Hey, here’s why.’ I think these guys, they want to win.”
When Greg Schiano made the jump from college to the NFL with the Buccaneers last year, we heard a lot of talk from him about changing the culture of the organization. Kelly’s taken a different approach, although any coaching change is going to lead to differences in the way teams do business. How Kelly changes the way the Eagles do business is one of many questions we’re looking forward to having answered once football makes its full-throated return, even though we know the only one that actually matters is whether or not they win more games in the years to come.