In his four years at Oregon, Chip Kelly wowed the nation with his prodigal offense, thought to be an offensive guru whose schemes left opponents breathless and bewildered. Upon closer examination however, the crux of Kelly’s success came not from his game plans, but from his process.
When Chip Kelly was announced as UCLA football’s next head football coach, I began researching what he did at Oregon. I wanted to know why he was so successful, how was he able to win the conference three times and go to four straight BCS bowl games (in four years) at Oregon, a place that doesn’t usually get first pickings on recruits. How was he able to average over 40 points a game during his tenure?
The more I delved into it, the more I realized that how Chip Kelly’s program operated was more important than what schemes it used.
This article focuses on the Oregon offense, and I will write a separate article about the Oregon defenses at a later date. Without further ado, lets get into it.
“I think the coaches that are the best, really what they do is make the simple seem complex to their opponents, but they make the complex seem very simple to their own teams.”
The Basics
The best way to describe Kelly’s offensive philosophy is in his own words, “I think the coaches that are the best, really what they do is make the simple seem complex to their opponents, but they make the complex seem very simple to their own teams.”
In this article by Business Insider, the author mentions that Oregon’s offense, contrary to what many may believe, was fairly simple, only running four different running plays.
But remember what Kelly said about the simple being complex to their opponents? Despite the small volume of plays the offense was fairly unpredictable, relying on fakes and misdirection to befuddle their opponents, often to great success.
If you want to see it for yourself, I suggest watching this video of the Oregon offense against USC in 2011. Notice how the Trojan defense struggled to consistency diagnose what the Ducks were throwing at them, giving up 29 points in the first half.
Putting it into practice
In his introductory press conference at UCLA, Kelly mentioned this: “I still think the game of football comes down to fundamentals: Can you block? Can you tackle? Can you catch? Can you make cuts?”
During this season’s NFC divisional round, the New Orleans Saints lost on the play shown in the video below. Here you can see the defensive back whiffed on a tackle, and the Vikings wide receiver was able to run into the end zone to win the game.
The lesson is that it doesn’t matter what level the game is at, whether its pro or high school, in every sport winning and losing generally comes down to the execution of fundamentals. This leads me to my main point: the true ingenuity of Kelly is not that he made an elaborate scheme that no one could figure out, it’s that he devised a system that his players could execute at a level of proficiency defenses couldn’t hope to perform at.
Instead of trying to outscheme your opponent, put your players in an environment where they can be successful because they understand exactly what they have to do.”
The aforementioned Business insider quotes Kelly as saying this: “With our inside-zone play, we get so much practice time and so many reps that we can handle all the other scenarios that come about. Instead of trying to outscheme your opponent, put your players in an environment where they can be successful because they understand exactly what they have to do.”
This focus on repetition is the key to understanding why Kelly’s system worked. In this article about Kelly’s practices, this excerpt really stands out “To Kelly, practice is for one thing: repetitions. Learning by doing.”
The article goes more in depth, mentioning that coaches rarely talked to players during practice, talking comes beforehand or in the film room, believing that practice should be solely dedicated to getting as many repetitions as possible. Kelly’s teams typically ran about 135-150 plays per practice, the results of which showed during game day.
Putting it into practice (cont.)
If you watch Oregon’s offense it’s amazing how well the little details on plays are executed, the blocking, the routes, the timings, everything. The Ducks didn’t have to think about what they were doing, they could just play with incredible competency developed through thousands of repetitions in practice.
Oregon is known for their speedy athletes, and rightfully so, but it pales in comparison to how much faster they thought.
And how did Chip Kelly fully exploit this during games? By snapping the ball every 13 seconds.
While the Oregon players could focus entirely on just playing football, opposing defenses were stuck figuring out what was going on. Kelly says “If your head is moving, your feet are not”. Or as former a UCLA coach liked to say “paralysis by analysis”.
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Because of the tempo, coaches didn’t have time to make adjustments, substitutions, or help their players before the ball was snapped, which meant players were largely on their own.
Defenses were caught in a Catch 22: if you don’t make a decision quickly, you’ll be left in the dust. If you make the wrong decision or a mistake, you’re sure to be punished, putting immense pressure on the defense to play flawlessly. It all comes back to Kelly’s practices and the ability of his players to perform their roles at a high level of competency.
All that pace had another advantage as well, defensive players weren’t conditioned to keep up, and when players get tired they make more mistakes. In a game that can be decided by something as small as a missed tackle, it’s easy to see why Kelly was so successful. The Ducks performed with such a consistent proficiency that defenses could never hope to match.
To reiterate: Chip Kelly’s genius was in making a system his players could execute at a level opposing defenses could never hope to realistically match.
Final Thoughts
Legendary UCLA head coach John Wooden was dubbed the “Wizard of Westwood” due to his success as a coach. However Wooden famously decried the moniker, and to him there was nothing magical about what he did. In his eyes he won games based on glamourless hard work and attention to detail. The truth is, so did Kelly.
This isn’t to say to say Chip Kelly isn’t a great play-caller, or that he isn’t a football mastermind: in fact he’s both of those things. But as Chip Kelly himself has said in an earlier quote his focus has never been to try and out-scheme his competition.
To me personally there’s a huge lesson to take away from the examples of Wooden and Kelly. Often times in sports we look at at the results, and focus in on what it is we can immediately observe; we gush over Wooden’s championships and Kelly’s touchdowns.
However, greatness is born from process. If we ignore that process we fail to fully appreciate what it takes to be great, and consequently the accomplishments of those who have achieved it.
Again I’d like to mention that I didn’t discuss the Oregon’s defenses under Kelly, which is largely underrated, and deserves more credit than it gets. I plan to discuss it soon.
Next: Team UCLA football should schedule
Furthermore, I hope this article made something that have seemed complicated seem simple to fellow Bruin fans and hopefully it gives people something to look for next fall. We’ll get our first shot to see our Bruin’s against Cincinnati at the Rose Bowl on September 1st.
Go Bruins!