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UCLA Football: With Chip Kelly hired, what’s next for the Bruins?

By Michael Chavez

GLENDALE, AZ - NOVEMBER 13: Head coach Chip Kelly of the San Francisco 49ers watches the action during the first half of the NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals at University of Phoenix Stadium on November 13, 2016 in Glendale, Arizona. The Cardinals beat the 49ers 23-20. (Photo by Chris Coduto/Getty Images)
GLENDALE, AZ - NOVEMBER 13: Head coach Chip Kelly of the San Francisco 49ers watches the action during the first half of the NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals at University of Phoenix Stadium on November 13, 2016 in Glendale, Arizona. The Cardinals beat the 49ers 23-20. (Photo by Chris Coduto/Getty Images) /
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With the UCLA Football powers that be making the Chip Kelly hiring official the logical question to follow is “what’s next?” for the Bruins?

In what might be one of the biggest hirings to ever happen for the UCLA Football team, the Bruins announced they have officially agreed to terms with former Oregon Ducks, Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers head coach, Chip Kelly. If you thought the firing of Jim Mora with a week remaining in the regular season was shocking that impact was matched when the Bruins were able to pull off this hiring instead of having the ball pulled from under their kicking foot in Peanuts fashion.

As excited as everyone might be right now about Kelly being hired and what he can do with this personnel, we aren’t quite sure what he is going to do with the rest of the staff. According to reports the current staff will stay intact through the bowl game for the Bruins but after that it’s anyone’s guess.

Related Story: UCLA Football vs. Cal 2017: Post game wrap up and thoughts

Looking at the offense will Kelly decide to keep first year OC Jedd Fisch who has been able to coax some very good performances out of a group that is talented but has a couple of glaring deficiencies that reared their ugly head this season? Fisch comes from the Jim Harbaugh tree but we saw this season he incorporates plenty of spread concepts into his offense. However like David Shaw at Stanford who faced some of his greatest battles against Kelly, Fisch knows the value of being able to control time of possession and running the football. Will Kelly keep Fisch in his current position and find a middle ground between their offenses or will the Bruins be announcing it’s fourth offensive coordinator in as many years?

Defensively things are surely going to change. The UCLA Football defense struggled much of the year against the run choosing to play more of a net like defense in the front seven. Instead of attacking downhill to negate a lack of size and experience up front the Bruins tried to “catch” ball carriers often after a six or seven yard gain. That same philosophy applied to the backend of the defense that often tried to keep everything in front of them but often enough either had teams play pitch and catch in front of them or blew coverages. The issues with the defense were furthered by a need to play many young players due to a rash of injuries.

So given that we at GJB believe the defensive coordinator job will change hands who do we think could be potential candidates? The guess that makes the most sense would be Cal DL coach Jerry Azzinaro who goes way back with Kelly but a name we’ve tossed around here is the current Washington State DC Alex Grinch.

Settling on a staff early will be key for the recruiting cycle that this year features an early signing period in December. It’s harder to recruit kids when they’re not sure who’s going to be their position coach or coordinator when the 2018 season starts and given Kelly’s well documented history of being lukewarm in the recruiting process you need assistants entrenched with targets as quickly as possible.

There are even more questions when you start looking at positional coaches. The Bruins’ staff could look radically different before the dust settles.

Next: UCLA Football: BREAKING-Chip Kelly announced as the next UCLA head coach

The first and biggest piece of the UCLA Football coaching board has been set for 2018. However this is a game of chess not checkers. Kelly has proven himself a capable strategist but we are all anxious to see what strategy he employs for these Bruins moving forward.