Booger McFarland credits Chip Kelly for Ohio State flipping its switch

ESPN’s Booger McFarland it putting a lion-share of the credit for Ohio State’s impressive turnaround on the shoulders of offensive coordinator Chip Kelly.

During the latest episode of Always College Football with Greg McElroy, McFarland joined the show to explain his reasoning, crediting Kelly for going against his offensive philosophy and throwing the football more, which has led to the Buckeyes’ dominance throughout the College Football Playoff.

Get your team’s official College Football Playoff watch from AXIA by CLICKING HERE: “Watches that tell so much more than time”

“Well, I think you can attribute it to two things,” McFarland said, regarding Ohio State’s success. “One, if you look at who that play caller is, Chip Kelly, you know, Chip has always been, at least in my opinion, you can tell me if you agree or disagree, Chip has always been a run guy. Like, even if you go back to the days at Oregon, he was a — yeah, they threw the football, but it was a run-based offense. And so now Chip comes to Ohio State and he’s got TreVeyon Henderson and they’re running the football. You get Quinshon Judkins, and now it’s going to be even more run. And I think — Ohio State fell into this trap up.

“Yeah, even though we have [Emeka] Egbuka, even though we have [Carnell] Tate, and we’ve got this unicorn in Jeremiah Smith, we’re still going to run the football. I think at a certain point during the season, somebody got to Chip and said, ‘Hey, throw the football to No. 4.’ It’s really — it’s not hard. Throw it to No. 4, run your offense through that. I get it, you want to run the football, and we spent a million and a half, or whatever the number is, on Judkins from Ole Miss. Doesn’t matter. Throw the football.

“We’ve seen this evolution, from Chip Kelly being a run-centric coordinator. Today, throwing the football all over the lot right now. And it’s much easier to get explosive plays in the passing game than it is in the run game. Think about it, the run game, you’ve got to get sometimes nine, 10 guys on the same page to create an explosive run. In the pass game, it’s one-on-one. Yeah, you’ve got to block them up front, but it’s usually one-on-one, or one-on-two. And if you make a guy miss, you can score a touchdown.

“I think Chip has figured out that his best player is No. 4, and his best position group is the wide receiver group. They’re getting the football to them. It took a little while, but we’re here now.”

Better late than never, it seems like, for Ohio State. Whatever Kelly has realized has completely changed the Buckeyes’ offense, and they’re humming like they’ve never hummed before throughout the past couple of weeks, against the top competition in the college football world.

It remains to be seen if it leads to a national title this season, but Booger McFarland won’t be betting against Chip Kelly and the Buckeyes. There next contest will kickoff on Friday at 7:30 p.m. ET, as Ohio State hopes to defeat the Texas Longhorns.