Chip Kelly and the Road Not Taken
Reminiscing on an incomplete past
Last week, I sat on my couch for almost four hours and watched Oregon vs Ohio State. The Oregon that I remember best was the Chip Kelly-led Ducks—the last Ducks team to be ranked #1, until yesterday.
As a raised Oregonian, Chip Kelly has always held a special place in my college football fandom. He led the rise of the Oregon Ducks into a consistent championship contender in my late teenage years and early twenties. Looking back, it feels like he was the head coach way longer than the four years he was in Eugene.
His innovative offensive mind, flashy uniforms, and state-of-the-art football facilities set off a trend that impacted most of college football. Sure, I know it wasn’t his money that paid for all the Oregon Ducks luxuries, but he represented what it all meant: Oregon football is here and is a national brand that can consistently contend for titles.
Looking back, Kelly was almost viewed as immortal among the Oregon faithful—he is still depicted in murals at the Oregon training facility today. Now, Kelly sits in the skybox for Ohio State and it almost feels wrong. He’s been reduced to calling plays from a booth, far away from the action on the sidelines. Kelly held the world in his hands while coaching in Eugene. Now, he answers to his former New Hampshire quarterback.
I get it. Coaches come and go. If a coach is lucky enough to have national success, most fall back to mediocrity shortly thereafter. Ninety-nine percent of coaches would die to be the Offensive Coordinator of one of the most storied college football programs in America.
But it feels like Kelly fell short of his potential of winning championships with a high-flying offense never before seen on the gridiron. Maybe Kelly’s aura has been greatly exaggerated in my mind because I was a fan of his, but it feels like he disappeared into the abyss of “just another coach” when he had so much promise.
The Rise at Oregon
After coaching at New Hampshire, Chip Kelly was hired to run the spread offense at Oregon as the Offensive Coordinator in 2007. After two years leading the offense, the reins were handed over to Kelly to be the Head Coach.
Nate Costa, a former player under Kelly said that during his time at Oregon, the goal started to become championships.
“It started becoming a part of the lexicon. Anytime you’re comfortable enough to talk about winning a National Championship, I think that’s when things change.”
Kelly’s high school coach ran a power-I formation and passed the ball only five times a game. For a short period, Kelly joined his former high school coach’s staff. Kelly recalls one practice when a receiver broke from the huddle and trotted toward the sideline. When no defensive player followed him, Kelly pointed it out. The reply from the old coach was, “Good. Now get him back in the box so he can block somebody.”
Though it sounds counterintuitive, Kelly’s offense was influenced by his old coach (yes, you read that right). Ultimately, Kelly is a run-first coach who uses the spread offense to create room and mathematical advantages for his athletes to make a play. Said Kelly:
“We spread the defense so they will declare their defensive look for the offensive linemen. The more offensive personnel we put in the box, the more defenders the defense will put in there, and it becomes a cluttered mess.”
At a 2011 Nike coaching clinic, Kelly explained how he reads a defense (for a more in-depth understanding, check out this piece):
“If there are two high safeties, mathematically there can only be five defenders in the box. With one high safety, there can be six in the box. If there is no high safety, there can be seven in the box. With two high safeties, we should run the ball most of the time. We have five blockers and they have five defenders.
If the defense has one high safety and six defenders in the box, the quarterback has to be involved in the play. He has to read one of the defenders, in effect blocking him [without actually touching him]. We can block five defenders and read the sixth one.”
However, what was really the calling card of Kelly’s time at Oregon was the pace of his offense. A mixture of an onslaught of multiple plays followed up by a play where the quarterback stopped while under center, looked to the sideline for a play call, and then proceeded. Doing so made defenses frantic to try and keep up and get the right personnel on the field.
During his time as the Head Coach at Oregon, Kelly went 10-3, 12-1, 12-2, and 12-1. He led the Ducks to Rose Bowl and Fiesta Bowl wins and a Rose Bowl and BCS Championship loss. He coached over 20 players who were drafted into the NFL. The little town of Eugene, Oregon was highly sought after among top recruiting prospects. He had created a powerhouse that had done everything except win a National Championship, but even that seemed inevitable. Until it wasn’t.
Many said Kelly would eventually coach in the NFL. Everything happened quickly as NFL teams came knocking. After initial interviews with the Bills, Browns, and Eagles, it was reported that Kelly decided to stay at Oregon. However, a week later, with NCAA penalties looming, he reversed his decision and bolted for Philadelphia.
NFL Woes
Kelly arrived in the NFL to moderate success. He led the Eagles to two 10-win seasons and one playoff appearance. However, things took a turn in his third season in Philadelphia, going 6-9. After being fired by the Eagles, he immediately went to the 49ers where things couldn’t have gone worse, going 2-14.
Kelly brought the same offensive philosophies to the NFL that he had at Oregon. The Eagles ran a no-huddle offense that focused on tempo. However, defenses began to pick up on his simplified playbook. NFL defenses were too good and too quick, predicting and adjusting as they learned Kelly's tendencies.
Perhaps the biggest adjustment for Kelly came off the field. He had to manage players' egos whose paychecks were larger than his. Stars such as DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy, and Jeremy Maclin were all shown the door by Kelly, many of whom criticized Kelly for his lack of leadership over a locker room full of men.
It’s not uncommon for college coaches to struggle in the NFL. Only a handful have successfully made the transition. For many standout college coaches, what seemed like the next step to progress in the football world, ends up being a nightmare.
With Kelly’s luck running dry in NFL circles, he scampered back to the college ranks to try and repair his coaching image and get back to the glory days of Oregon. What he found though was a college landscape that drastically changed and looked more similar to the NFL he was leaving than the college football world he remembered.
UCLA Failures
Kelly arrived at UCLA in 2018 after taking two years off. UCLA made him the highest-paid state employee in California, but he didn't perform like it. He went 35-34 and never won ten games in six seasons.
Kelly has been criticized for his minimal recruiting efforts and for doing little to engage boosters. This could be seen if you were to walk into the empty Rose Bowl during his tenure there. Tarps filled the stadium to cover all the empty seats, and even at that, it was usually only half full.
Being in Los Angeles, Kelly should have had many high-quality recruits in the area to woo into his program. But Kelly didn’t put in the effort to get the best talent. He had very little interest, especially with the introduction of the NIL in 2021, to dedicate time and effort to recruiting. He wouldn’t attend big high school games in Southern California. In short, Kelly didn’t have the personality to be a successful Head Coach in today’s college football landscape.
With very few expectations at UCLA, Kelly managed to keep his job. But when an old friend, Ryan Day, called, Kelly picked up the phone and didn’t look back.
Back to His Roots at Ohio State
Maybe Kelly looked at the road to success in college football today and saw that it was filled with stop signs, speed bumps, and pedestrians. I wouldn’t be surprised if coaching tenures shrink during the NIL era because of the exhaustion of constantly selling and reselling players to play for their program. Kelly did what he knew he was built to do and decided to slide over to the passenger seat.
As Kelly was being introduced in Columbus, Ohio as the New Offensive Coordinator, he remarked that his wife told him that she hadn’t seen him this happy in a long time. He went back to his comfort zone of play calling and ditched the need to recruit players and schmooze boosters. One might call his move to Ohio State a demotion because he is no longer leading a program. However, with the sorry state of UCLA and the professionalization of Ohio State, I may call it a promotion.
As I reminisce on Kelly’s journey, I still can’t help but think of what could have been at Oregon. If he had stayed, maybe people would now mention Kelly’s name with the likes of Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, or Bobby Bowden as one of the premier minds in college football. In reality, it probably was never in the cards, and that’s ok. Maybe his innovative offensive mind is just a blip in history and becomes a footnote in the college football history textbook.
Kelly is now back where things are best suited for him, but Duck fans will always ask themselves, “What if?” I’m sure Kelly occasionally does the same.