Kelly delivers in NFL debut

LANDOVER, Md. - A lot of prominent football minds once thought Andy Reid was some sort of mad scientist, a Dr. Jekyll trying to reinvent the game of football - one forward pass at a time.

Now that we have had our first NFL glimpse of Chip Kelly, it's clear that Reid was on the same side of Columbus' ship with all the mates who thought the world was flat.

In his debut as Eagles head coach, Kelly didn't just win over a fan base known for its rigid skepticism; he also became the NFL's biggest story of Week 1. That's no easy task when a guy named Peyton Manning throws for 462 yards and seven touchdowns, but Kelly's first half as an NFL coach was truly something to behold.

"Wow, it was wow," Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said after presenting his rookie coach with a game ball in the visitors locker room at FedEx Field.

Please slow down was the message coming from the Redskins after the Eagles built a 33-7 lead early in the third quarter, then held on for a 33-27 victory in Kelly's dizzying debut.

"As we were taking a knee at the end of the game, [Redskins defensive end Chris Baker] said, 'Next time, you guys need to slow it down a bit,' " Eagles center Jason Kelce said.

That's not likely.

Kelly's offense is built to go fast, and it went at warp speed in his NFL debut. The Eagles' rookie coach outmaneuvered the Redskins' Mike Shanahan, a man who has won two Super Bowls, and he made veteran defensive coordinator Jim Haslett look like Juan Castillo at crunch time during the first half Monday night.

"We're excited," Kelly said. "I thought our guys played with great energy. I had a lot of fun tonight and I think our guys had a lot of fun."

As if they had a choice.

"That was the first time I used oxygen since college," Kelce said. "It definitely wears on you, but I think it wears on the defense a lot more. The first half was a sky-high feeling."

Kelly's first-half mission appeared to be the same as Buzz Lightyear's: To infinity and beyond.

We'll have to wait a while to see whether the new coach's way of doing things has lasting power in a league with limited rosters and some brilliant defensive minds. It looked as if it might not last through the evening as things got way too hairy in the second half.

"The second half was a different story," Kelce said. "We started slowing down a little bit, they started packing the box and blitzing off the edges. We have to do a better job of handling that. That's one of the things we're looking forward to going back and looking at the film."

While the Eagles look at that film in an effort to right their second-half wrongs, the rest of the nation will be looking at what the NFL's new coaching sensation did during the first half against the Redskins.

Kelly promised a fast pace and the Eagles floored it from the start, running 53 plays by halftime. They ran only 24 in the second half, and Kelly acknowledged that he may have eased up on the gas pedal too soon.

We expected more run than we saw with Reid's offense, and LeSean McCoy had more rushing yards in the first half - 115 - than he had in all but eight of his first 58 NFL games. He also had more carries by halftime than he had in all but 11 of his NFL games. He finished with 31 carries and 184 yards.

The hope was that Kelly's system would fit Michael Vick, and at least on this night the 33-year-old quarterback looked as if he was in a pair of comfortable old shoes. By the end of the third quarter, he had completed 13 of 22 passes for 171 yards and two touchdowns.

Even though the first offensive series of Kelly's tenure resulted in a defensive touchdown, it was still an immediate glimpse at just how enchanting this new system and this new season could become. The first four plays went to four players and took less than a minute to run.

Blink and you missed the Eagles moving the ball to the Washington 4-yard line in 10 plays and a little more than 21/2 minutes.

It was a stunning start to Kelly's career that made it clear what he did in the labs on the University of Oregon campus also could work on the fields of the NFL.

That drive also ended in stunning fashion, however. On first and goal from the 4-yard line, Vick tried to throw a short pass to McCoy in the flat. The pass was knocked down by linebacker Ryan Kerrigan, and as the Eagles' offensive players stood thinking it was an incomplete pass, cornerback DeAngelo Hall scooped up the football and ran 75 yards for a touchdown.

Kelly threw the first red challenge flag of his career and referee Ron Winter decided upon further review that the ruling - a backward lateral on the field - would stand. That was about the only thing that did not go as planned for Kelly and the Eagles during the first half of his first game.

The whole league will be watching to see where things go from here.