8. Philadelphia Eagles get two second-half bombs from Wentz to DeSean.
Once upon a time in a land known as Philly, an NFL franchise would bank the future on a college football coach that set the world on fire by having assistant coaches hold up collages while his team ran an offense where there was no huddling.
While that’s been done before (think the Cincinnati Bengals or the Buffalo Bills), for whatever reason, when Chip Kelly did the same thing, this was seen as some uncharted territory that football had never gone into before. The Eagles were so intrigued that they brought Kelly to the NFL to replace the winningest coach in team history, Andy Reid.
The experiment started okay. Philly made the playoffs in Kelly’s first season. Teams had trouble adjusting to something they weren’t seeing week in and week out, but as we often see in pro football, everyone adapted (does anyone remember “The Wildcat”?), and any magic Kelly had was gone.
Year 2 for Chip Kelly was where we noticed something. He had difficulty or some type of phobia with managing personalities. Anyone who was too vocal was shown the door. That meant there was no more room on this team for LeSean McCoy. That also meant that there wasn’t going to be any room whatsoever for DeSean Jackson.
It took a while, but “D-Jax” would eventually make his way back to the nest, and in his first game back, fans were reminded of what they had been missing and why they fell in love with him in the first place. An Eagles offense that had struggled in the first half of their first game found its wings (pun intended) as Carson Wentz found Jackson with two 50-yard bombs that put Philly up on the scoreboard for good.
Sure, we didn’t know at the time that those would be Jackson’s only touchdowns in 2019, but you can’t talk about last season without talking about the magic we saw in Week 1.