Chip Kelly not bothered by critique
— -- PHILADELPHIA -- If Bruce Arians thinks the read-option is a "great college offense" unsuited to the NFL game, that's fine with Chip Kelly.
"I don't care what other people think," Kelly said Thursday. "It doesn't bother me. To spend time to think about what someone else thinks is counter to everything I've ever believed in my life.
"If I believe what other people think, that means I value their opinion more than I value my own. That's not the case."
Arians, the first-year head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, recently referred to the read-option as a "great college offense." Arians and the Cardinals (7-4) will take on Kelly and the Eagles (6-5) on Sunday in Philadelphia.
Kelly, the architect of the NFL's fourth-ranked offense in his first year as the Philadelphia Eagles' head coach, did take a moment to correct Arians' terminology. The read-option is a play, Kelly said, not an offensive system.
"And we don't run read-option if you want to get really technical," Kelly said. "We run a zone-read play every once and a while. It's just like saying our offense is a power offense because we run the power play, or the old Green Bay Packers, their offense was the Green Bay sweep offense. It isn't.
"Everybody's got a bunch of plays they run offensively. Everybody's got a quick game. Everybody's got screens. Everybody's got dropback. Everybody's got out of pocket. Everybody's got power, counter, inside zone, outside zone. I've never looked at it as an offense."
Arians' primary point, made in a conference call with Philadelphia reporters Wednesday, was that having your quarterback run exposes him to too many hits and increases the risk of injury.
"Quarterbacks get hurt in practice," Kelly said. "Quarterbacks get hurt running out of bounds. Quarterbacks get hurt when the blitz hits them and they don't recognize it. I don't look at it that way, never have looked at it that way."
When asked what to call his offense, Kelly joked.
"We run the 'See Coast' offense," he said. "If we see something and we like it and we think it fits, we're going to run it."
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