Why the Chip Kelly To College Rumors Are Silly
Chip Kelly is not going back to college anytime soon. He’s staying with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Kelly may have made a name for himself as the head coach of Oregon, leading his team to a near-insane level of offensive success while there. However, the NFL game is totally different, and he’s now in a completely new situation. Yet, as with too many NFL coaches, and professional coaches in general, he has been put on the hot seat far too early.
I believe that there is no chance that Chip Kelly will be gone anytime in the near future. Even less likely is that he’s going to accept a job coaching a college team again. He has finally worked up to the point of being both coach and general manager of an NFL team, what’s the incentive of leaving that behind less than a season after holding both of those responsibilities simultaneously?
Some might argue that the money would’ve been lucrative to coach at USC, which at this point, obviously can’t happen since they’ve already hired a new head coach. This is true that if someone like Chip were to get hired by a school like USC, the contract would likely be huge. He’d probably have a lot of power. However, nothing can really match the power that he currently has with the Eagles. It just wouldn’t be the same.
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Coaching in college and the NFL are very different. Some coaches have been able to do both, and some were only successful in college. Some guys were successful in college, struggled in the NFL, went back to college, and then went back to the NFL to succeed. But it has to be a really dire situation for a coach to leave college, go to the NFL, and bail on the NFL so quickly into their tenure.
It does happen though. Jim Harbaugh had immediate success in the NFL after leaving Stanford, but was eventually forced out by upper management as the 49ers’ franchise dismantled piece by piece in the offseason. In one season back in college, he led Michigan to a great season. Let’s not forget Bobby Petrino either, who signed a five-year deal to be the Falcons’ head coach in 2007 and resigned mid-season after going 3-10 to accept a job as the Arkansas coach. Other than that first year back in college, he’s had a winning record as a head coach ever since.
Success is possible after going back to college, and I’m sure Kelly is aware of that. However, the rumors that he’s going back at every single head coach opening at a power 5 conference are just stupid. They are manufactured rumors by people in the media who like to stir up trouble. I like to think that I’m not naive here and that Kelly really does have 100% commitment to the Eagles despite the worst two-game stretch for the franchise in a long time. However, it’s hard to really know what he’s thinking.
Eagles
But, I’m pretty confident in saying that the Chip to college rumors are just that — rumors. Even if colleges are “considering” him in their coaching search, it in no way implies that Chip is actually interested in that job. And that’s what people seem to always mix up. And then it starts to spiral out of control. And then he looks bad for something that’s not even his fault. With as many problems as he’s dealing with in the NFL, the last thing he needs is worthless and unneeded pressure put on him by people dying for him to return to being a college coach.
So, as each college head coaching position slowly gets filled, no Eagles fans, or anyone else in the world for that matter, should be surprised that Kelly isn’t the one filling in the hole. He’s the head coach and essentially GM for the Eagles, he’s not going anywhere.
I will, however, provide one disclaimer. If he were to turn his back on the city of Philadelphia and leave for a college coaching job because “things got tough” in the NFL, it would not be a step forward for the Eagles. The Eagles could lose every game for the rest of the season and it still wouldn’t help them to fire him either. For him to fully leave his mark on this franchise, he needs more than a handful of average quarterbacks and continuous roster turnover to build success. He needs more time. And that is why there’s no chance he’s going to college anytime soon.