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Dream Team.
Those words spoken by Vince Young during the 2011 offseason still haunt Philadelphia Eagles fans until this day. After making a ton of signings in the offseason, the Eagles were confident they were going to be really good that year. Instead, they started the season with a 4-8 record before finally missing the playoffs with a .500 finish.
The Eagles didn't learn their lesson. Take a look at this 2015 team and it's not hard to see part of the reason why this team failed is due to all the changes made by Chip Kelly in the offseason. In an interview with Howard Eskin on 94WIP, Eagles center Jason Kelce admitted this year's team is "Dream Team 2." The full interview runs 20 minutes long, so go check it out. I've highlighted some of his most interesting comments below.
“It’s tough to say. Obviously, there were a lot of things that led to the downfall of this season. And I don’t know that I should be airing these out, really, to tell you the truth.
The biggest thing to me is I’ve been through two seasons where you’ve seen a collapse, or a downfall with some teams. In both offseasons, there was tremendous change. And by change I mean through free agency.
And the reason I hesitate saying that is because we’re probably going to have some new free agents this year. We’re probably going to sign some new guys this year. You can make great acquisitions in free agency. I’m not saying that you can’t. But I think on offense, especially, when you have so much change, so many new guys … I think I’ve realized through these two instances that trust and chemistry are more important that I really ever understood. It’s hard to develop that within one offseason. I think when you have guys who are retained and guys who stay with teams for years and years and years, and you bring in one or two guys through free agency ever year, I think that tends to keep everyone together and welcome those new people even better.
And if I’m being quite honest, I don’t think I welcomed the new pieces as well as one of the guys being retained. I think that never really took place from the players aspect of it. I think I’ve seen this twice now and I think it’s really hard to build championship caliber teams and winning teams through free agency.”
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This game, at the end of the day, it’s a game about trust. I’ve never played another sport or another competition where you have to rely on somebody else so much. At the end of the day, it’s not just about being a teammate. It’s about having interpersonal connections with the other people who are on the field with you.
And it goes deeper than being out at OTAs with somebody. It goes deeper than taking a practice rep with somebody. It’s something that when you’re with somebody for years, or a locker room’s been together and you have a core group of guys who have been through only the Philadelphia Eagles, all they know is this city, all they’ve played for is this city, I think that that tends to build a locker room and build a culture — which is what one of Chip’s favorite words were — that lends itself to chemistry and lends itself to people giving of each other and only knowing the Philadelphia Eagles. That is really to hard to build within one offseason and you can’t just do that at practice.
I think if we retain the players that we have now … there’s going to be offseason changes this year, but I think that can be done. I think I’m going to my best job this offseason of trying to get guys together, trying to make this team a team again.
Because right now this is the Dream Team 2. A collection of guys. All of a sudden, you sign the NFL’s leading rusher [DeMarco Murray]. Sam Bradford, one of the best quarterbacks around that you could get through a trade. We got two new starting guards [Allen Barbre and Andrew Gardner/Matt Tobin]. Another new running back [Ryan Mathews]. A brand new receiver through the draft [Nelson Agholor].
There was so much change. I think that me, as one of the offensive guys being retained, I didn’t do a good enough job of getting us together and creating those bonds and making everybody feel like a team.