The Success of Chip Kelly. The New Old School

[Oldschool Leroy]

interesting article

[Kurb]

Personally I don't care where they come from if the can get the job done, I'm just very skeptical about college coaches using us as their test run. If they've coached in the NFL before I feel better about it, but to me Kelly looks to be the proto-typical college coach who runs a gimmick offense that just won't succeed at the NFL level.

I'm borderline on Kelly to be honest.

Some of the pros:

Play Calling Speed would give D's fits.

NFL coaches have high respect for him (Billicheat for one)

He is incredibly intelligent, so one could assume he can adapt.

Cons:

Spread

No NFL experience

SPREAD

[acrasia]

If we hire Chip Kelly became our head coach, is he going to bring his OC to keep running the

same offensive style now, because who ever becomes the next OC he is going to install his

own offense not Chip's. Unless he desides to become the OC and HC.

[Zod]

No NFL experience

This is the deal breaker for me.

Good chance this guy is a bust.

[Fox007]

I don't even care anymore, how could he be worse than the bull poo we have had at Carolina?

[Gucci Mane]

Do yall not realize that the reason Chip Kelly is having so much success is because he recruits on speed and if your slowest guy on offense is still faster than the fastest guy on defense, you are going to have a ton of success at the college level. Especially against PAC defenses.

I'm not taking anything away from Chip as a coach. He is fantastic. But dont think the second he comes into the NFL that hes gonna have our Offense busting defenses wide open and turning every play into a track meet. NFL defenses are too fast and too disciplined to fail.

[rayzor]

I'm borderline on Kelly to be honest.

Some of the pros:

Play Calling Speed would give D's fits.

NFL coaches have high respect for him (Billicheat for one)

He is incredibly intelligent, so one could assume he can adapt.

Cons:

Spread

No NFL experience

SPREAD

the spread has been spreading to the NFL for years now and has been used as eventhe base offense for a lot of the most prolific and elite offenses in the league.

i'm not worried about that. most of the league will have changed to a spread in a few years. the "pro-style" offense is nothing more than a trend that has been used in the league for a long time, but there is nothing more "pro" than the spread.

the lack NFL experience is the only that concerns me, but if he were surrounded by asst coaches with NFL experience it wouldn't concern me at all.

i think he has the team and game management skills needed to be successful coaching at any level and he has enough intelligence and savvy to know how the game works. he approaches the game in a very cerebral way, but also in a very aggressive way.

imo, he is everything and more that i know i hoped that rivera would be. i'm as sure about this guy as i was about harbaugh. i actually think he could be better.

[rayzor]

Do yall not realize that the reason Chip Kelly is having so much success is because he recruits on speed and if your slowest guy on offense is still faster than the fastest guy on defense, you are going to have a ton of success at the college level. Especially against PAC defenses.

I'm not taking anything away from Chip as a coach. He is fantastic. But dont think the second he comes into the NFL that hes gonna have our Offense busting defenses wide open and turning every play into a track meet. NFL defenses are too fast and too disciplined to fail.

it's not the speed of the players. it's the speed of his system. he runs a hurry up no huddle offense, but he holds the whole team to it.

he manages everything at a killer pace and he's also smarter than most coaches.

if you think it's just because he recruits fast players then you aren't paying attention.

[panthers55]

Has Kelly had significant NFL experience like Harbaugh and Carroll. If so then he could be a good choice. If not, then we don't need to be his first stop where he learns what to do. We need a proven guy who can run with the tools he has got not experiment and try to figure it out.

[Bj-Monster23]

Do yall not realize that the reason Chip Kelly is having so much success is because he recruits on speed and if your slowest guy on offense is still faster than the fastest guy on defense, you are going to have a ton of success at the college level. Especially against PAC defenses.

I'm not taking anything away from Chip as a coach. He is fantastic. But dont think the second he comes into the NFL that hes gonna have our Offense busting defenses wide open and turning every play into a track meet. NFL defenses are too fast and too disciplined to fail.

I been coming around on the Chip Kelly bandwagon for some time now and boy I think he can be a great coach. The reason why is because he is very intelligent and game plans like no one else. I was watching something on him and they asked him why don't he run more pro style plays. His reaction was, if he had the personnel to do so they would be in the power I all game. This let me know that he is able to understand things like that. I think the Panthers will be the best fit for but I don't know if Jerry Richardson will want him.

[rayzor]

i'm glad someone else saw this article, btw. i read it yesterday and while i might have been leaning his direction before, i'm sold now.

the thing that really caught me was this....

Since Kelly became Oregon's offensive coordinator in 2007 and its head coach in 2009, the incredible statistics and daunting record rolled up by the Ducks has been largely credited to Kelly's famed spread offense. This season Oregon is 10-0, fourth in the country in rushing, second in total yards, and first in scoring with more than 54 points per game. The most common explanation for this success is Kelly's up-tempo, no-huddle approach and the theory that simply running plays quickly is what transforms a good offense into a great one. There's an element of truth to this — the no-huddle is undeniably key to Oregon's identity — but the explanation is incomplete. Oregon doesn't use its fastest tempo all the time, and the benefits of the no-huddle go well beyond those 60 electrifying minutes on Saturdays.

Kelly's anecdote about his old high school team suggests another possibility. Chip Kelly's offense works not because it's a gimmick, but because rather than choose sides between old and new, Kelly's teams straddle history. Oregon is successful because it does well what good teams have always done well, albeit with a slightly more modern wardrobe.

"We spread the defense so they will declare their defensive look for the offensive linemen," Kelly explained at that same clinic. "The more offensive personnel we put in the box, the more defenders the defense will put in there, and it becomes a cluttered mess." Twenty years ago, Kelly's high school coach ran the unbalanced, two–tight end power-I, so he could execute old-school, fundamental football and run the ball down his opponent's throat. Today, Kelly spreads the defense and operates out of an up-tempo no-huddle so he can do the exact same thing.

Every coach has to ask himself the same question: 'What do you want to be?'" Kelly said at a recent clinic. "That is the great thing about football. You can be anything you want. You can be a spread team, I-formation team, power team, wing-T team, option team, or wishbone team. You can be anything you want, but you have to define it." That definition is evident in Oregon. Kelly's choice of a no-huddle spread offense drips from every corner of the impressive practice facilities in Eugene. Oregon does not run a no-huddle offense so much as they are a no-huddle program.

For all of the hype surrounding Oregon games, Oregon practices might be even better. Oregon practices are filled with blaring music and players sprinting from drill to drill. Coaches interact with players primarily through whistles, air horns, and semi-communicative grunts. Operating under the constraint of NCAA-imposed practice time limits, Kelly's sessions are designed around one thing: maximizing time. Kelly's solution is simple: The practice field is for repetitions. Traditional "coaching" — correcting mistakes, showing a player how to step one way or another, or lecturing on this or that football topic — is better served in the film room.

The up-tempo, no-huddle offense ends up benefiting in practice as much as it does in games. Without time wasted huddling, players get many more practice repetitions, leading to increased efficiency on Saturdays. As Sam Snead once said, "practice is putting brains in your muscles," and Oregon's up-tempo practices are all about making Kelly's system second nature.

When the games do begin, there's no question that the no-huddle makes Oregon's attack more dangerous, but it's a common misconception that they have only one supersonic speed. The Ducks use plenty of their superfast tempo, but they actually have three settings: red light (slow, quarterback looks to sideline for guidance while the coach can signal in a new play), yellow light (medium speed, quarterback calls the play and can make his own audibles at the line, including various check-with-me plays), and green light (superfast).

This change of pace is actually how Oregon constantly keeps defenses off balance. If they only went one pace the entire game the offense would actually be easier to defend. When the defense lines up quickly and is set, Kelly takes his time and picks the perfect play. When the defense is desperate to substitute or identify Oregon's formation, the Ducks sprint to the line and rip off two, three, or four plays in a row — and it rarely takes more than that for them to score.

i have been hearing and reading that NFL execs and insiders have been saying that kelly runs the best practices of anyone they've seen and not a one of them has said that what he does in games or in practices wouldn't work.

i think that if he were given more time with the players and was given more mature and experienced players to work with, that he could absolutely do in the pros what he does at the college level.

it's the philosophy, the creativity, the management skills, and his intelligence that has won me over. the lack of NFL experience would only be there for the first year or two. again, if he had a staff made up of NFL experienced coaches i think he would be fine in that regard.

[rayzor]

I been coming around on the Chip Kelly bandwagon for some time now and boy I think he can be a great coach. The reason why is because he is very intelligent and game plans like no one else. I was watching something on him and they asked him why don't he run more pro style plays. His reaction was, if he had the personnel to do so they would be in the power I all game. This let me know that he is able to understand things like that. I think the Panthers will be the best fit for but I don't know if Jerry Richardson will want him.

the system or at least the play selection he uses in oregon he uses not because that's all he can do, but because it's the easiest and most effective for his players to learn in limited time.

given more time and better players we would be seeing a whole lot more.

[rayzor]

Has Kelly had significant NFL experience like Harbaugh and Carroll. If so then he could be a good choice. If not, then we don't need to be his first stop where he learns what to do. We need a proven guy who can run with the tools he has got not experiment and try to figure it out.

i'd rather have a guy with college HC experience over a OC or DC from the pro level without HC experience.

i really don't think that a lack of NFL experience is going to hamper his ability to be effective as a coach at the NFL level. i don't think that's the case for everyone.

the more i've been looking into this guy, the more i've been convinced that he'd be a success at any level.

[rayzor]

If we hire Chip Kelly became our head coach, is he going to bring his OC to keep running the

same offensive style now, because who ever becomes the next OC he is going to install his

own offense not Chip's. Unless he desides to become the OC and HC.

chip kelly is his own OC. kind of like sean payton and other coaches who handle the playcalling.

he'd have an OC to help implement things in practices and who would work as an advisor or whatever, but i think he'd handle it the way he does in oregon basically because he's smarter than anyone else he would have calling plays.