Chip Kelly: Eagles were already offered first-round pick for Sam Bradford

Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly called a surprise press conference on Wednesday afternoon in an attempt to dispel some of the rumors that are surrounding his team. In short, Kelly insisted his decision to trade for Sam Bradford is not part of some bigger plan to draft Marcus Mariota.

“Let’s dispel that right now,” Kelly said, via Dan Hanzus of NFL.com. “I think that stuff’s crazy. You guys have been going with that stuff all along. I think Marcus is the best quarterback in the draft. We will never mortgage our future to go all the way up to get somebody like that because we have too many holes to take care of.”

Kelly added that Bradford and Mark Sanchez are his quarterbacks going forward. In order to drive his point home, he told reporters that the Eagles were offered a first-round pick for Bradford on Tuesday morning and turned it down. Should we believe him?

Unless the first-round pick was one from 2019 or beyond, it seems unlikely that a team would offer to give up that much for a quarterback who has torn his ACL twice in two seasons. If you want to think Kelly is lying in an attempt to increase Bradford’s trade value, we wouldn’t call you insane.

That said, Bradford works well in a fast-paced offense and Kelly was reportedly aggressive in his pursuit of the former Oklahoma star. Either Chip is tossing out a major smokescreen in order to squash reports like this, or the Mariota rumors have been blown out of proportion.