Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly is a funny guy. I feel like there haven't been many of his press conferences that I've seen or attended where he doesn't crack at least one joke.
On Monday morning prior to the Eagles public training camp practice at Lincoln Financial Field, Kelly spoke to the media and was clearly in a joking mood. I went as far to note that Kelly's humor is in mid-season form despite it only being preseason.
The main topic of conversation was related to Kelly's comments about the NFL Draft that were revealed in Peter King's MMQB column released early on Monday morning. In King's column, Kelly is quoted as saying he thinks the annual NFL Draft is one of the worst things about the league. More specifically, Kelly doesn't like the hype associated with the draft prospects
Kelly was asked to expand on his thoughts specifically as it applied to second round pick Jordan Matthews. Here's what he had to say. Bold emphasis is mine:
No, I'm not concerned with that. He just asked me if there was one thing about the NFL that surprised me and I said the hype in general with the draft. I think the draft is integral obviously with putting together your team but literally from the day the Super Bowl ends until the draft, at the ending of May, or the beginning of June or maybe push it to July at some point in time; that's all everybody talks about.
I felt the same way in college. You devote everything to the signing day. Well, how many of those guys on the signing day are actually going to contribute? You may have one or two of your rookies that have an impact on your team but the rest of them it's a part of having them develop.
It's just that was the only ... he asked me what was surprising me and I just think the hype that surrounds the draft in general. The fact that people would watch the Combine; there's times at the Combine where I fall asleep. So I don't know why people watch it on television. They are running 40 yard dashes.
I just think the hype was the point I was talking about, and it's like anything else, I don't care who it is, as I said, you guys are in the newspaper business. If someone is a rookie coming into the newspaper thing, I don't think you all just start applauding and saying, ‘Oh my God, the savior is here and our paper is safe because we just signed a kid out of Northwestern because the kid has really good prose.’
But in football it seems to be the biggest deal in the world and if a guy is not an All Pro in his first year but he was drafted in the first five picks, obviously he's a bust. But I don't think that's the case.
That one had the media cracking up. And Kelly even circled back to that reference later in an answer to a Zach Ertz question:
Just general knowledge in what we are doing. He obviously was behind. There are six schools that guys are not allowed to come, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Northwestern for any of you guys that are going to add a Northwestern writer to your staff, won't be available till June, and I think UCLA. He missed the spring.
The other moment of Kelly's comedic genius came when he was asked about the training camp practice fight between Trent Cole and LeSean McCoy. Bold emphasis is mine.
Yeah, their emotions got the better part of them. Those things happen. It's no different than sometimes little kids don't get along very well and throw Tonka trucks at each other. I don't think the fact that it made SportsCenter must have meant it's the world's slowest sports day, I can tell you that. That two kids push each other in practice somewhere. It’s not a real big deal.
There's no doubt that Chip is a character.