Chip Kelly did UCLA a favor by bailing to be Ohio State’s OC

Chip Kelly to Ohio State was one of those moves that was bubbling under the surface for a while. Those who follow college football closely could connect the dots. If Bill O’Brien left Ohio State after a few weeks as offensive coordinator to become Boston College’s head coach, then Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day could call his former coach and boss to take the play-calling baton that Day himself had just abdicated. Kelly had all but hired a skywriter to say “Come get me.”

But those who weren’t knee-deep in the guts of the sport were stunned.

The texts from friends who don’t live this every day came fast Friday afternoon, and they all asked the same question. Why would someone leave a head-coaching job to take an offensive coordinator job in the same conference?

The answer is multi-faceted and says a lot more about Chip Kelly and his particular situation than it does about the quality of the UCLA job.

The first thing you need to understand about Kelly is that he doesn’t enjoy recruiting. Kelly has a no-BS personality that makes the car-salesman aspects of the job very uncomfortable. But being a head coach in college football requires a person to have at least a little WHAT’S-IT-GOING-TO-TAKE-FOR-YOU-TO-DRIVE-OFF-IN-THIS-TODAY in him. Kelly doesn’t have that. It’s why he chose UCLA instead of Florida when he was offered both jobs in late 2017. Coaching at Florida would have required a much more aggressive recruiting style. Kelly knew himself better than that and took UCLA. But over time, the changes in the sport have only made Kelly’s least favorite part of the job more unpleasant to him. 

While the transfer rule changes have hamstrung the sales-coaches who didn’t always tell the truth during the sales process — which should have been to Kelly’s advantage — the constant need to re-recruit the roster turned the part of the job Kelly already hated into a never-ending cycle of annoyance. He was not shy about telling everyone that the sport needed major changes. He had some decent ideas, too. 

So that was one piece of the reason. This is why Kelly first pursued NFL offensive coordinator jobs. He could have gotten the Ohio State OC job before O’Brien had he been so inclined at the time, but the Raiders or Commanders probably seemed more appetizing. No recruiting, and he didn’t have to take a very public step down. “I just wanted to get back to the NFL” is a perfectly valid excuse. But no one in the NFL hired Kelly. Fortunately for him, the Green Bay Packers did hire Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley as their defensive coordinator. That opened up BC for O’Brien, which created the escape hatch for Kelly.

Yes, Kelly still must recruit at Ohio State. But the credit or blame for the quality of the roster falls on Day, who conveniently enough has more time to manage the roster because he now has Kelly to draw up the offensive game plan and call plays.

But the recruiting part was only one piece of the reason for Kelly’s departure. The other? UCLA probably was going to fire Kelly at some point this season. 

Let’s travel back to November. UCLA has just lost 17-7 to Arizona State a week after losing 27-10 to Arizona. All the momentum from a 6-2 start had come to a screeching halt, and some of the people in power at UCLA were looking at Kelly’s recruiting and wondering how in the hell the Bruins were to be expected to compete with Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan in the coming years if they could only muster seven points against the Sun Devils.

Forces aligned against Kelly that week. The whispers turned to screams. 

Then they stopped. It wasn’t only because UCLA beat USC 38-20 that Saturday. If the decision were totally result-driven, Kelly would have been right back on the chopping block following a 33-7 loss to Cal to close the regular season.

Kelly, who was in the process of signing the No. 70 class (No. 17 of 18 in the new Big Ten) in the On3 Industry Team Recruiting Rankings probably saw the writing on the wall. Five-star quarterback recruit Dante Moore, one of only two top-100 recruits Kelly signed during his time at UCLA, hit the portal and landed at Oregon, the school UCLA had flipped him from a year earlier. For whatever reason, UCLA had put the brakes on firing Kelly following the 2023 season. But he likely wouldn’t survive 2024.

So he left.

He probably did UCLA a favor. In his six full recruiting cycles at UCLA, Kelly never signed a class ranked higher than No. 29. His predecessor Jim Mora finished in the top 10 a few times. It is possible to get talent to Westwood*, but it requires an aggressiveness Kelly didn’t possess. He wanted to find his kind of guys and develop them. That could produce a decent program in the dearly departed Pac-12. It will get a team destroyed by the top programs in the new Big Ten.

*UCLA offers a world-class education and sits in the Westwood neighborhood, basically next door to Beverly Hills. Yes, it does require a slightly better caliber of student, but it should not be that difficult to sell to top recruits. Mora proved this when he was there.

UCLA needs a coach willing to fish the waters that produce top-100 players. It needs to aggressively mine the transfer portal, which will take a coach willing to help the collective raise money. That’s the only way the Bruins can succeed in their new league.

Perhaps the answer is someone like Minnesota’s P.J. Fleck, whose offer-now-ask-questions-later recruiting style is the antithesis of Kelly’s. Fleck is staring at a new-look league that probably won’t reward the kind of program he’s built in Minneapolis. There is no more West Division in which to play three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-snow. Perhaps he needs a place where he can recruit a more dynamic roster.

Or perhaps UCLA finds a Group of 5 head coach or hot power conference coordinator who understands that roster management, while a giant pain in the butt in 2024, is the most important piece of the job.

Day understands that, which is part of the reason why he just hired Kelly. Kelly understands that, which is part of the reason he just left UCLA.

And now UCLA gets a chance to find a head coach who wants to do the job required.