Len Damico

A Treasury of Chip Kelly, for Eagles Fans

The New Old School: The success of Chip Kelly’s Oregon offense is more familiar than it seems

If you only read one of these links, make it this one.

“We spread the defense so they will declare their defensive look for the offensive linemen,” Kelly explained. “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.

Practice

Oregon Turns Practice Into Nonstop Sprint With Precision as Goal

Inside the insane pace of a Chip Kelly practice. Jon Gruden is a fan:

Other programs pride themselves on tempo, but Gruden said he had never seen an operation that was both this fast and this refined. Oregon’s practices last two hours, an hour less than a typical college practice, and there is so little time between plays that coaches must do their teaching with only a few words or wait until the film room. Kelly said that practice had become so sophisticated and fluid that getting off 30 snaps in a 10-minute period had become common.

At Oregon, it’s all about moving quickly and saving time

Practice is divided into five-minute segments of revolving action in every nook and cranny on the field. The music varies among rock, rap and country. Monday’s practice included a snippet of Indian music, transitioning to the rhythmic pulses of “Circle of Life,” from “The Lion King.”

This number was handpicked by Kelly.

“I love that song,” he explained later.

Efficient Use of Practice Time (PDF)

More on practice: a coaching clinic white paper Chip presented to NIKE Coaching Clinics in the past that is quite interesting and help with his fundamental concepts.

Xs and Os

Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #1: The Inside Zone Read

Making sense of a keystone play of a Chip Kelly offense.

With the Spread, big holes would appear, but was that from the formation, unique blocking, or the direction we were attacking? Plays start one direction, but the ball ends up elsewhere on a routine basis and Chip is fine with it? How does it happen? Is there any consistency to the formations at all? It seemed we could end up ANYWHERE on the field no matter what the initial formation was.

Coach Chip Kelly Explains The Oregon Spread Offense (PDF)

The amazing thing about the success Kelly’s had at Oregon is that he hasn’t been secretive at all about what makes his offense tick. He’s been giving this talk about the intricacies of his flavor of the zone read since at least 2009.

“We average 6.2 yards per carry. We have four running plays. We run the inside zone, outside zone, counter and draw.”

Kelly, the man

Chip Kelly’s Secret Offense: Why University of Oregon boosters are annoyed with their most successful football coach

A number of substantial Oregon football boosters, many of whom requested anonymity, expressed a widespread annoyance with Kelly. Although most would agree Kelly is an extraordinary coach, he doesn’t care much for the many other obligations that come with his job. “Some of the college boosters have gone as far as to say, ‘I hope he does leave so we can get somebody who appreciates the fans,’” says Jack Roberts, a former Oregon labor commissioner and Oregon alumnus.

On Kelly and the NFL

With 1 word, Patriots’ no-huddle an NFL marvel

If you want to see what’s next on the pro level, look to the colleges. That’s what Belichick does, with his alliances with coaches such as Nick Saban (LSU and Alabama), Urban Meyer (Florida and Ohio State) and, now, Kelly.

“I was interested to hear how he did it,” Belichick said. “I would say he expanded it to a different level and it was very interesting to understand what he was doing. Certainly I’ve learned a lot from talking to Chip about his experiences with it and how he does it and his procedure and all that.”

How Oregon Coach Chip Kelly Can Spark ‘Moneyball’ Revolution In NFL

Here’s an example of how the NFL works. The Miami Dolphins were 1-15 in 2007 and started off the ‘08 season 0-2. In Week 3, they instituted the Wildcat offense, finished 11-3, and made the playoffs. Pundits argued that the Wildcat was a gimmick, that defenses would adjust, that it would never last, and they were partially right. Defenses did adjust, yet somehow, five years later, more than fifty percent of NFL teams have a version of the Wildcat in their playbook.

Why does this matter? Because when something catches on in the NFL, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. At first they refute it, call it a fluke, and then eventually, when a team wins 11 out of 14 games after losing 17 of its previous 18, they realize that there might be something to the newfound strategy and hurry to insert into their playbooks. The NFL is a cat and mouse league.

This is how and why Chip Kelly will modernize the game in the same way that Billy Beane’s triumphs showed baseball executives that getting on base is more important than batting average. When Kelly enters the league, he’ll play the game aggressively, with “aggressively” meaning in a mathematically logical fashion. By the end of the season every coach will be going for it on fourth down, attempting fake punts, fake field goals, two-point conversions, and they’ll likely do all of this oblivious to the fact that there’s astounding mathematical evidence supporting the decisions they’re making.

They’ll just see Chip Kelly’s team lighting up the scoreboard and follow suit because… well, 90 percent of NFL coaches are followers.

Be Careful What You Wish For With Chip Kelly and The NFL

Here’s the tired “most other college coaches fail so obviously Chip Kelly will fail” argument:

Kelly runs an explosive college offense, but like Spurrier’s fun ‘n’ gun, it is distinctly and uniquely a college offense. It is built on the principle of littering the field with speedy young men who can outrun the opponent’s speedy young men in the wide-open spaces that only exist at a level of play where everyone is a step slower, an inch shorter and 15 pounds lighter.

And, the counterpoint:

Chip Kelly is as likely to be the next great coach as anyone else

Reducing Kelly to an X’s and O’s guru incapable of adaption is unfairly harsh. Tanier credits the great Nike machine with providing Oregon with superior talent, but that’s not a fair criticism. Oregon has never had a top-ten recruiting class under Kelly, and Rivals generally ranks Oregon’s classes in the teens or early twenties. Spurrier, coaching in talent-rich Florida, not remote Oregon, was playing with a decked more favorably stacked than Kelly ever has. But more importantly, Kelly’s offenses were unstoppable when he coached at New Hampshire without any recruiting edge, and his success at Oregon happened immediately, even before Oregon truly became the nouveau riche of college football.