Kelly: ‘They Just Found a Way’

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With 1:49 left, Kyle Orton and the Cowboys took the field from their own 32-yard-line with a chance to put together a game-winning drive.

But instead of moving into field-goal range, Orton was picked off by Brandon Boykin. And just like that, the Eagles had a 10-6 record and an NFC East title during Chip Kelly’s first season.

“It’s an awesome feeling when you can work as hard as they’ve worked and to see it pay off and the result is 10-6 and you’re division champs,” Kelly said. “It’s a real credit to those guys. They didn’t flinch. That was an interesting fourth quarter to say the least, but this group keeps battling, and they just found a way.”

Boykin ended a victory over the Redskins with an interception in the end zone. He has six picks on the season, tops on the team and tied for second-most in the NFL.

“You watch how hard he works when we’re in training sessions and his attention to detail and all those things and it pays off,” Kelly said. “But he made the play in the Redskins game, he made this play, so it’s just it seems like he comes up in a good time, which is a good thing for us.”

The game wasn’t always pretty, and it certainly wasn’t the blowout some predicted. But that didn’t seem to bother Kelly.

“I think they understand that in this game it’s not always gonna go the way you planned,” he said. “That’s the one thing that’s the beauty of this game. You can’t script it. It seems like every time someone tries to write the script, it doesn’t turn out that way.

“If you just keep plugging away, and I told ’em last night that all they had to do in this game was they needed to be caught in the act of being themselves and just understand that they have everything they need to be successful. And there’s gonna be times in a game where we’re gonna face some adversity, but dig deep, rely on the guy to the right of you, next to you. You don’t have to do everybody’s job. You just have to do your job and things will work out for you, and it did.”

The offense was up-and-down, but put together an 11-play, 60-yard drive in the fourth quarter, killing 5:37 off the clock. Nine of the 11 plays on the drive were runs.

“It was huge,” Kelly said.

“We were trying to score in that situation obviously, but if you can also work the clock a little bit, it was beneficial to us and we feel like we’re built for that in terms of our conditioning. We could sense they were wearing down a little bit.”

Kelly is scheduled to meet with the media again at his usual time of 1 p.m. Monday afternoon.

Follow Sheil Kapadia on Twitter and e-mail him at skapadia@phillymag.com.

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