Much like his boss, Chip Kelly, Jeff Stoutland had absolutely no NFL experience before he was hired as the Eagles’ offensive line coach. But Stoutland says that’s no problem.
Stoutland was Alabama’s offensive line coach the last two seasons and has also coached at Miami, Michigan State, Syracuse, Cornell and Southern Connecticut. In all those years in college, Stoutland says, he had a philosophy of coaching physical football, and he thinks his approach will translate well to the next level.
“I don’t think you have to change anything,” Stoutland said, via Philly.com. “I think the reason Chip brought me here, Chip likes physical football. I think the perception of this type of offense is that it’s not physical. Even my former players were joking about it. But this stuff is no different than what I was teaching at Alabama. Football is a game of angles. It’s all angles. I don’t care if you’re run-blocking or you’re pass-setting. You’ve got to calculate your angle based on what’s in front of you. And you gotta hit it 100 mph. I haven’t changed one bit.”
When a reporter asked whether it was really true that Stoutland hadn’t changed a thing from the way he coached in a more prototypical offense at Alabama to coaching in Kelly’s faster-paced offense, Stoutland insisted that he has changed nothing.
“I haven’t. I swear to you,” Stoutland said. “That’s the perception, but it’s not true. We run a lot of the same plays here that we ran there.”
And Stoutland will coach the same way in Philadelphia as he did at Alabama. Where he coached the best offensive line in college football.
