The Mystery Known As Chip Kelly

[Desert Duck]

Chip is now officially a mystery to me. What he did while head coach at Oregon was unprecedented at the time. Until Lanning came along, Chip's 86+% winning percentage was unparalleled at Oregon. 

 

I realize that he did things at that time that were groundbreaking in CFB. 

 

So, was he a great coach only while at Oregon, and then kind of lost the magic and sucked after that? Or was his 'new' type of football that he brought to CFB only good until the other teams caught up?

 

Your thoughts are appreciated. 

Edited yesterday at 01:39 AM by Desert Duck

[30Duck]

Chip revolutionized football, in college and the NFL, Saban said it was destroying football until he embraced it and won with it. It's fair to say that Chip's best years were at Oregon. 

 

His style didn't work at the NFL and he still hated to recruit at UCLA. I doubt he does much with it at osu2 and if not for his relationship with Day, probably wouldn't have the job.  

[Utki]

I personally think he massively benefited from Mike B's foundation and I was told how I didn't understand and that he would revolutionize the NFL and be incredible and I said I just don't see it. 

[AnotherOD]

I would tend to agree. A lot was in place for Chip when he came to Oregon. Bellotti had success and Oregon had been moving and shaking since Phil came aboard in 1995 . Chip was able to concentrate on his offensive master plan (and I imagine Nick was given pretty free reign over the defensive side).

 

Consider the experienced staff he inherited: Aliotti, Greatwood, Campbell, Neal, Pellum, Osborne, plus Frost, Helfrich, and Azzinaro.

 

While certainly not bare, Chip didn't seem to develop a large coaching tree, and both his Eagles and 49s staff seemed to largely be pieced together from a bunch of randomly available guys Chip hadn't worked with. If you ever followed UCLA fan discussion over the Chip era, it often was which assistant coach was worse, and will the new bad hire be worse than the bad hire he was replacing. The thought was that Chip didn't really care.

 

When he arrived at Oregon he also had a lot of talent to work with: Dixon, Stewart, Dickson, Williams, Unger, Schwartz, Reed, Byrd, Thurmond, Chung, Ward, others. It's widely agreed Chip was no fan of recruiting but I think Oregon had a long established recruiting network and those experienced coaches (plus the Nike connection), that made talent acquisition manageable.

 

His personel decisions were widely questioned in Philadelphia, and his 2016 49 team was considered roster poor. Finally, his recruiting rankings at UCLA, while not terrible, average about #29 per year, where as they had averaged #17 per year the decade prior (when UCLA had gone 68-61). Of the 116 high school commits Chip got over his 6 classes, he only had 1 five star (Moore), and 20 four stars.

 

UCLA, great degree, in Southern California, about five miles from Venice beach, has always been thought of as a school that should almost recruit itself, had classes ranked #7 (2013), #10 (2010), #12 (2009), and #12 (2015) recently prior to Chip.

 

The narrative with Chip seems to be he caught lightning in a bottle with his offensive scheme and tempo and the football world eventually caught up; and, while I suggest that is fair, I wonder if an underappreciated factor is the idea of stepping into a situation with nearly everything in place to have success (and then bringing in something exciting and new) versus having that, but also at the same time needing to construct a near full rebuild. Some have suggested this may partially explain the Riley situation at USC to date.

 

Edited yesterday at 04:29 AM by AnotherOD

[Charles Fischer]

It was bad enough that he did not want to recruit in the old days, but he also did not hire well with assistants at UCLA. Now he has NIL and recruiting his own players to come back?  He's out...

 

But he sure had a great game-plan tonight.

 

[Augduck]

Yes Chip appeared to have a great game plan aided by Tennessee’s abysmal defensive game plan.

 

Nico needs lots of refinement and coaching.

[GatOrlando]

Chip raised Oregon to a National level. His scheme enabled him to turn undervalued prospects into game changers. But the world caught up to his scheme and he was still recruiting at the same level while he was at UCLA. He sent to a place that could give him the talent he couldn't get on his own.

 

Gus Malzahn is very similar. He is a better recruiter though.