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When Chip Kelly and Pete Carroll first crossed paths on opposing sidelines in 2007, Kelly was an up-and-coming offensive coordinator at Oregon and Carroll had already established himself as a national championship-winning coach at USC. Neither of them could’ve envisioned that 18 years later they’d be coaching alongside one another with the Las Vegas Raiders.
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“I’ve got great respect from when I coached against him my first year in the Pac-10 — and I did say Pac-10, that’s how long ago it was,” Kelly said Wednesday. “I think everybody in the coaching profession, if you get a chance to work with Pete Carroll, you’re pretty excited about it.”
The Raiders hired Kelly as their offensive coordinator Monday. Kelly hopped on a Zoom call Wednesday to talk to reporters about why he left his previous position as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator to take the same role under Carroll, who was hired as the Raiders’ head coach last week.
“Obviously, this is the highest league of football. The competition is at an all-time high,” Kelly said. “It’s that competition that drives you. And then talking with (general manager) John Spytek and (owner) Mark Davis and just where everybody is aligned in this organization and then getting a chance to talk to (minority owner) Tom Brady about what he feels he can help Pete and Mark with. I was just excited about that alignment of everybody.”
GO DEEPER
Raiders announce hire of Ohio State OC Chip Kelly in same role
This is Kelly’s third job in the NFL. After a decorated four-year run as the head coach at Oregon, he jumped ship to the league to become the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles in 2013.
Early on, it looked like a strong move. Kelly led the Eagles to a 10-6 record and a playoff berth in his first season. While they missed the playoffs the following year, they again finished 10-6. Things fell off the rails in 2015, however, as the Eagles went 6-9 and Kelly was fired ahead of the final game of the season.
Kelly immediately landed another head coaching opportunity with the San Francisco 49ers in 2016, but it was a disaster. The 49ers endured a miserable 2-14 season, and Kelly was fired once more.
Since then, Kelly had settled back into the college ranks. After taking a year off from coaching, he was hired as the head coach at UCLA in 2017. After compiling a middling 35-34 record there across six seasons, he willingly took a demotion to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State. Ironically, he was considered for the Raiders’ offensive coordinator vacancy before he landed in Columbus.
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It was a curious move that came with a sizable pay cut, but it paid dividends for Kelly. This season, with Kelly calling plays, Ohio State averaged 35.7 points per game (T-12th in FBS) and 6.9 yards per play (third) and won the national title.
“I try to stay on top of the game and where the game is headed,” Kelly said. “We huddled a lot this year (at Ohio State); we didn’t run a lot of plays. … It was drastically different from when I was a college coach at Oregon and we were trying to get as many snaps a game in as possible and run guys off the field. We’ve evolved that way just because I think the game itself has evolved. There’s a trend overall that the number of snaps both at the college and at the NFL level are down, so you have to adjust.
“That’s one of the biggest things: Going from those five-wide, fast, no-huddle, breakneck speed, shiny helmets to getting in a huddle and playing with 12 personnel. It’s a little bit different, but you still get the same amount of points when you get the ball across the goal line whether you run it across or throw it across. We’re just trying to get some first downs and score some points.”
The Raiders passed on hiring Kelly in 2024, but with Carroll in place, things changed this offseason. Carroll, Spytek, Davis, Brady and the Raiders brass lured Kelly to Las Vegas with a contract that will pay him an annual salary of $6 million, according to team sources. That makes him the highest-paid coordinator in the NFL.
It’s fair to question whether Kelly will have success at the professional level given his two previous stints, but it’s important to remember that he won’t have nearly as much responsibility this time around. With the Eagles and 49ers, he had to worry about roster building, managing the coaching staff, making decisions in all three phases of the game and more. With the Raiders, he’ll be focused solely on the offense. There are still plenty of differences between the college and professional games, but Kelly believes there’s more crossover than there used to be.
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“Football is football,” Kelly said. ‘With the advent of social media, YouTube and things like that, people’s access to film and tape is more prevalent, so you can see more things that people are doing throughout all of football. I think I see it blending a lot more now. … It’s really become wide open.”
The Raiders offense has been in desperate need of a lift ever since the franchise released quarterback Derek Carr following the 2022 season. They’ve averaged just 18.8 points per game (27th) and 4.9 yards per play (26th) across the two seasons since. Having cycled through five different starting quarterbacks and four different offensive play callers during that span, it’s no surprise that consistency has escaped them.
Las Vegas is hopeful it has found its offensive play caller for the foreseeable future in Kelly, who’s 61 years old. For him to prosper, though, they need to find their quarterback of the foreseeable future.
Incumbent starter Aidan O’Connell isn’t the answer, and neither is backup Gardner Minshew II, who’s likely to be released this offseason. Whether it’s a veteran or a rookie, the Raiders need to find an upgrade this offseason.
Kelly hasn’t gotten to formulating a plan at quarterback just yet as his focus has been on evaluating the players already on the roster and helping Carroll construct the offensive coaching staff. The Raiders have hired Carroll’s son, Brennan, as offensive line coach and Greg Olsen as quarterbacks coach, according to team sources, but there are still several vacancies remaining. As it stands, the only offensive assistant coaches besides Kelly listed on the team website are interim offensive line coach Joe Philbin, tight ends coach Luke Steckel and offensive assistant Tim Zetts, who were all members of the previous staff under former coach Antonio Pierce.
When asked what he looks for in a quarterback, however, Kelly did have some thoughts to share.
“It depends on the personnel because you can’t build a quarterback,” Kelly said. “We don’t have a scientific lab here where we can say we want a 6-foot-5 guy that’s 250 pounds and runs a 4.4 (40-yard dash) and can make every throw. You can’t do that. You have to look at what is available to you whether it’s through the draft or through free agency or on the current roster. And then, what are their strengths and how do we design our offense around their strengths? It has to be designed around how the quarterback plays. So, I think it’s really your evaluation of the personnel that’s available to you and then fitting them into that system.”
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Kelly is excited about the challenge facing the group, even after two decades of losing for the franchise.
“What Mark built here … this facility has to be the best in the NFL, and they talk about the commitment to excellence here and looking at this and the stadium that they play in, one can really see that Mark is committed to it,” Kelly said. “It’s our job as a staff to execute that vision that Mark has, and there is no better group to do it with.”
Some have speculated whether Kelly could be the coach-in-waiting for Carroll, who’s the oldest head coach in NFL history at 73, but Kelly said that being a head coach again isn’t currently on his mind.
“You’ve got the cart way ahead of the horse,” Kelly said when asked whether he wants to be a head coach again one day. “I’m really excited to be here with Pete, and I think anybody that tries to look too far down the road is going to get run over. You better make sure that you concentrate on exactly what’s right in front of you. I don’t have to be a head coach again. That’s not something I need to do or a box I need to check. I just really enjoy coaching.
“I’m really not concerned (about it). If I never coach again after this season, then I would have a life that I never dreamed I could ever have in football. I’m going to coach for a long, long time as long as someone will have me. Whether that’s as a position coach or as a head coach or as a coordinator, I’m not really caught up in that stuff.”
Required reading
• Ranking the Raiders’ free agents: Tre’von Moehrig, Robert Spillane should be in demand
• Super Bowl or Senior Citizen Bowl? Older coaches are having a moment in the NFL
(Photo: Tom Hauck / Getty Images)
