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DeMarco Murray playing time flap not what Eagles need

CHIP KELLY'S point Wednesday was that DeMarco Murray and Jeffrey Lurie just happened to be sitting next to each other on the charter flight back from New England, and that Murray's expression of disappointment with his role in the offense evolved from that - Murray didn't request a meeting, or actually go to the owner's office to air grievances, and besides, he'd already aired those grievances to Kelly, anyway.

CHIP KELLY'S point Wednesday was that DeMarco Murray and Jeffrey Lurie just happened to be sitting next to each other on the charter flight back from New England, and that Murray's expression of disappointment with his role in the offense evolved from that - Murray didn't request a meeting, or actually go to the owner's office to air grievances, and besides, he'd already aired those grievances to Kelly, anyway.

My point is shorter: It doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter if Murray and Lurie struck up a conversation while standing at adjoining NovaCare urinals.

Doesn't matter if they found themselves in line next to each other at Wal-Mart toward the end of a long day of Christmas shopping.

Doesn't matter if Murray happened to venture out caroling and found himself in front of Lurie's house, whereupon he and his group were asked inside for hot chocolate and gingerbread.

The part of this that Kelly should be worried about isn't that Murray unburdened his soul to Jeffrey Lurie, spontaneously or otherwise. Chip's problem is that we all learned about the unburdening from tweets and a story by ESPN's Dallas-based Ed Werder, tweets and a story that were transparently sympathetic to Murray's plight.

Somebody in Murray's camp - agent, family member, friend, Murray himself - thought the world needed to know Murray had taken his frustrations over his role to the Eagles' owner. And the question arising from that fact hasn't changed - why? Toward what end?

"That's a great question," Kelly conceded, during a frenetic, combative news conference that the team surely would have preferred be focused more on the Eagles' resurrected hopes of winning the NFC East. "I don't have an answer for that."

There are only a couple of possibilities - that the person divulging the information thought he or she could bring pressure to bear on Kelly to give Murray a bigger role, or that this was the start of a campaign to get Murray off the Eagles and into an offense that better suits his talents.

Either way, it's a bigger problem than Kelly wanted to acknowledge Wednesday.

Kelly's reason for Murray having the lowest yards per carry of any Eagles running back was that Murray missed the Jets game, when everyone ran well, and, hey, let's not forget Murray has had his moments, like everyone else. (Which didn't really answer the question.) Teams defended the Cowboys differently when Murray led the NFL in rushing last season for them. Also, there have been a lot of "moving parts" on the Eagles' offensive line, and "we haven't been successful overall offensively, the way we'd like to be."

If Murray had been willing to answer questions Tuesday or Wednesday, the story would just about be over, at least until there was another set of snap counts to analyze Sunday afternoon in the Bills game. But Murray has declined to speak until Thursday, his regularly scheduled day. This ensures that Thursday, too, will be about his meeting with Lurie and how it made its way into the headlines. If I were Lurie, Kelly, or an Eagles media executive, Murray's opting to make a two-day story into a three-day story would not thrill me.

Several Eagles players polled Wednesday said they'd never had occasion to sit with Lurie on a flight, but one of them explained that the owner seldom travels with the team. Kelly said "all of our players" sit in first class, which would entail a very large first-class cabin, even for a jumbo jet. Tight end Zach Ertz said that first class on the 757 actually is for the vets and the bigger linemen, that guys such as Ertz sit in coach.

Could Ertz see himself ever pouring out his frustrations to Lurie?

"I don't know the situation or circumstances . . . I know their seats happened to be next to each other on the plane . . . I don't think he's had the season he'd envisioned, but, at the same time, he's a very competitive person, and we're tied for first place in the division at this point in the year. That's all you can really ask for, as a team," Ertz said.

Outside linebacker Brandon Graham said he didn't find out about the Lurie-Murray confab until Wednesday.

"Shoot, man, I hope they get that straightened out, whatever that is," Graham said.

Graham said he didn't find it distracting, or concerning.

"People have frustrations," he said. "Some people talk about it, some people don't."

Much has been made of how Murray ran mainly from under center in Dallas and is usually in the shotgun here. Kelly said he didn't see that as a huge issue.

"In college (at Oklahoma), he ran from the gun every single snap, so how many snaps did he have there?" Kelly asked. "And he knew coming in, just like we knew coming in, what we were going to do. We never had any discussion that we were going to change our system, you know?

"The only discussions we had - this is why I like DeMarco - is we all talked about winning when he came here on his visit. And Ryan Mathews was here on his visit when DeMarco came. They both knew exactly what we were trying to get accomplished here."

Mathews, by the way, is back from a three-game concussion absence, and he probably will get some snaps against Buffalo that could have gone to Murray.

"He may be the most explosive (back) we have there . . . I think he has got that kind of extra gear," Kelly said, when asked about Mathews (75 carries for 427 yards).

Mathews' average salary of $3.66 million, by the way, is less than half that of Murray's $8 million a year.

On Twitter: @LesBowen

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian