Fans love redemption stories and tidy solutions. Chip Kelly was recently fired in Las Vegas, and the Ducks need a new offensive coordinator. The natural leap is to ask, could Chip return to Eugene, defy Thomas Wolfe and all logic?
The simple emphatic answer is, no way.
Kelly caught lightning in a bottle as Oregon offensive coordinator in 2007, promoted to head coach in 2009. He lost his first game in embarrassing fashion, 19-7 at Boise State, but went on to claim three straight PAC-10/12 Championships and amass a 46-7 record with a national championship appearance and three Top Five finishes.
Chip Kelly to Oregon a case of remembering and moving on
But there were glitches and failures too. A recruiting scandal put the program under investigation. Kelly left abruptly for the NFL.
At the pro level he had some early success but ultimately met failure, dismissed at Philadelphia and then San Francisco, though he made good money. He returned to the college game at UCLA with mediocre results, unable to keep up in the new world of the Transfer Portal and amplified pressure to recruit.
He ditched the Bruins for an opportunity to dial up plays for his old quarterback Ryan Day at Ohio State and won a national championship, leaving again at the end of the year to work with Pete Carroll as offensive coordinator in Las Vegas, fired 10 games into the season after designing one of the worst offenses in the league in a 2-8 start.
Though it may have been partly scapegoating, reports out of Sin City suggested cognitive decline, as if Kelly had lost his grip on the game and the intricate details of the job. He was calling plays the team hadn't practiced, plays from another time and place, or so the story went.
Sports love a redemption story, but Kelly's won't be written at UO. He doesn't fit the meticulous, cooperative, player-led, team-oriented process of the operation. He's always been a bit of a maverick, a terse, outspoken loner who goes his own way. The mantra in Eugene is FEBU. Kelly's focus is more singular than that.
If he wants it he'll have another opportunity in football because of the brilliance he's displayed in the past, but in no way is he a fit at Oregon on the staff of Dan Lanning, in a program with a much different focus and stamp.
Ironically, the win over Washington brought Lanning to the same mark as Kelly, 46-7. The future of the program is much better today when it was when the Chipster packed up for Philly. But the memories-- it'd be foolish not to be grateful for LaMichael James, Kenjon Barner, Darren Thomas, Jeff Maehl and the offense that scored 50 points a game and buried the PAC-12.