FWIW - I knew I read this somewhere before. Found it. Chip Kelly. UNH '90.
A little yankee conference ingenuity out there in the division 1-A landscape.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ga-kelly010711
John Perry, who worked with Kelly as receivers coach at UNH, said his colleague always had his eyes open and freely experimented with different sets and plays. If it was out there and effective for someone else, Kelly had no problem incorporating it immediately to keep an opponent off-balance. The two still text on a regular basis to swap ideas and congratulations.
“We might come out one week in five wides virtually the whole game,” said Perry, now the head coach at Division II Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. “The next week, we might be in a double-wing, looking like Navy.
“Against Villanova, we used 36 different formations and 28 shifts in a 70-play game. That’s what’s kept him on the cutting edge. He’s fearless when it comes to that stuff. He’s got a great deal of confidence that things can work and will work.
“He’s always thinking the game. We could be watching a recruit on TV and the joke was always, ‘Wow, that’s a neat play. That’s in this week.’ He just always wants to give the defense new things to think about.”
Kelly’s UNH offense in 2005 averaged 493.5 yards and 41.7 points per game. It built off a 2004 group that set 29 school records, rang up 5,446 yards and scored at least 40 points seven times.
Still, such feats flew mostly under the radar until former Oregon coach Mike Bellotti gave Kelly his big break. Kelly had visited Oregon in 2005 to pick the brain of then-offensive coordinator Gary Crowton. When Crowton left the Ducks to take the same job at LSU two years later, he recommended the relatively unknown Kelly for the Oregon post. Kelly came to Eugene to run the offense in 2007.
“I’m very proud of Chip and what he’s done,” Bellotti, now an ESPN broadcaster, told the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard.
Kelly’s calling card is a dizzying attack that plays at a fast pace. The ’07 Ducks set school standards for scoring and total offense. A year later, they were even better, second nationally in rushing and seventh in total offense and scoring.
In 2009, Oregon elevated Kelly to his first head-coaching job at any level. The Ducks ended USC’s run of seven consecutive Pac-10 titles, going 10-3 with their first Rose Bowl appearance since 1995. Kelly became the first coach in conference history to win an outright title in his first season. The Ducks were sixth nationally in rushing, eighth in scoring and showing no signs of stalling.
Quarterback development has been key. First Dennis Dixon, then Jeremiah Masoli, now Darron Thomas. Kelly just keeps churning them out.
“He has taught me a lot,” said Thomas, a third-year sophomore. “At first, he was my offensive coordinator. I was in the room learning from him in the quarterback meetings. Coach Kelly is one of those guys who just wants to score, and that’s what an offense wants to do.
“He is a football guy to the heart. He watches every game, any game. If we are having meetings, he pushes them up so we can go watch a game. Each game he sees as a teachable moment.”
So fast are the Ducks that one opponent this season, California, resorted to feigning injury to try and slow them. So staggering are the numbers, you need a calculator to keep up.
• 537.2 yards per game.
• 303.5 yards rushing per game
• 233.7 yards passing per game.
• 49.3 points per game.
The only number that matters now is one: Kelly has the school a win away from its first national championship.
Like many coaches, Kelly, 47, lives and breathes the game 24-7. He’s a bachelor with a focused football mind. Still, Perry said Kelly’s value for friendships and relationships is the thing that separates him from others.
“The No. 1 thing is he is very loyal person,” Perry said. “He stayed at New Hampshire 15 years. He’s engrained in Oregon now, where I’m sure he’ll be for a long, long time.
“He told me before my wedding he couldn’t make it because he was out of town at a camp. He showed up in the last hour because he knew it was important to me. So he made it important to him. He cares.”
Kelly comes across as all business all the time. He has become known for his ever-present backpack and sometimes sports glasses, looking more the part of campus nerd than big-time football coach. What does he do for fun? Perry said Kelly’s an avid golfer, long off the tee though prone to struggles with the putter. He surprised his staffmates at UNH with his crafty play on the basketball court.
“I don’t know how much he plays now, but he was good,” Perry said. “We would play at lunchtime. He’s an avid runner. He’d be up every morning when we were roommates and go for a run. He used to talk about those moments being times when he’d be able to free think and do his own thing.”
Just three days before playing for college football’s Holy Grail – the BCS crystal ball – Kelly reflected on how far he has come.
Darron Thomas is the third QB Kelly has groomed into a star for the Ducks.
(Jason O. Watson / US Presswire)
The biggest difference between New Hampshire and Oregon?
“They drive too slow [in Oregon],” Kelly said.
Did he ever think he’d have a team on this stage, playing for it all?
“I had no idea,” he said. “I don’t think any coach does. You each have different paths and you end up taking them. An opportunity comes and you just weigh is it better than the situation you’re in. To me, it doesn’t mean anything different. You just want to win.”
In contrast to other coaches who spend much of their careers trying to climb the ladder, Perry said Kelly would have been content to continue beating the likes of Rhode Island, Maine and Massachusetts at UNH. Scheming and victories, not status, is all that has ever mattered.
“I think being a great football coach is the only thing that’s driven him,” Perry said. “I think if he was the offensive coordinator at UNH right now and he was part of teams that were winning championships and having great players, he would be perfectly happy.
“The rest of the world should be grateful that we see him at this level because now everyone gets to see how good he is.”
With so much focus on what Oregon will need to do to counter Heisman winner Cameron Newton and the Tigers’ offense, Perry said Auburn should be wary of what Kelly might have tucked under his visor.
“I know a lot of people are talking about Cam Newton, but I’m wondering how Auburn is going to stop them,” Perry said. “The thing that’s fun about watching them is you can see that moment in the game when everything turns Oregon’s way. At that point, it’s just like, ‘Look out.’ “
In an interesting twist, Kelly and Auburn defensive coordinator Ted Roof have matched wits twice before, when Kelly was at UNH and Roof was coordinator at Massachusetts. In 1995, UNH edged UMass 32-29, and in ’96, UNH rolled 40-7.
Kelly doesn’t read much into that.
“Did I look at the tape, no,” Kelly said, laughing. “Because I think the UMass defense is a little different than Auburn’s, and I know that the New Hampshire offense is a little different than Oregon’s.”
The SEC has claimed four consecutive national championship rings, and Auburn is seeking one for the thumb. It may just take a guy with roots in the former Yankee Conference to stem the South.
Chip Kelly could be that guy.
