Chip Kelly, Ryan Day and the early days of an American football revolution
DURHAM, N.H. — The Downeaster train whooshes northward on a fall afternoon, past lily-covered ponds, over rusted bridges and through the reds and yellows of the New England woods. Halfway between Boston and Portland, Maine, the train horn blasts, and the conductor hurries down the aisle, keys jangling at his hip. “Durham stop,” he calls out. “Durham.” The brakes squeal, and a college town comes into view.
The railway cuts a path through the University of New Hampshire’s athletic campus. To the right, there’s an arena they call “The Whitt,” the crown jewel for a hockey school. Look out the window to the left, and the last thing you see before the train ducks beneath an underpass and stops in front of a small station are the goalposts and grandstands of the Wildcats’ football stadium.
It feels a long way from big-time college football. But it was here where, a quarter century ago, two great offensive minds came together. Chip Kelly was a first-year offensive coordinator. Ryan Day was his first quarterback.
Back then, before Kelly’s ingenuity made him one of the most coveted play-callers in the country, he was an anonymous figure in the football universe: a 35-year-old former New Hampshire defensive back working at his alma mater. “He was just a name in the media guide,” said Mike Zhe, who covered the team for the Portsmouth Herald. “Page 40, offensive coordinator: Charles ‘Chip’ Kelly.”
Inside the football facility, however, Kelly was revered.
“He was like a mad scientist,” former New Hampshire tailback Stephan Lewis said.
The football field was Kelly’s laboratory. He tinkered, experimented and often pleaded with players to go faster. More motion. More concepts. More disguises. Kelly wanted to snap the ball as frequently as possible and deliver it to playmakers in space, spreading out defenses and wearing them down.
“Basketball on grass,” Lewis said.
But Kelly’s concepts were nothing without a quarterback to run them.
Kelly and Day
are both from Manchester, N.H. “Same elementary school, same high school, same junior high, same college,” Kelly said this spring. They knew all the same people back home. But it wasn’t until seeing Day at a camp in high school that Kelly knew he could handle the complexity of a college offense. That day, Kelly raised a play card in the air and watched Day drop back and make a clean throw to the sideline in a 7-on-7 drill. He lifted another card. The calls grew increasingly complicated. Again and again, Day directed traffic with ease and found an open receiver.
Sean McDonnell, the former New Hampshire head coach, recalls sharing a look with Kelly.
“We were sitting there going, holy s—,” McDonnell said.
Last winter, at the low point of his head-coaching career, Day phoned Kelly.
Ohio State had again fallen short of its championship expectations. Even worse,
Michigan hadn’t.
Most places, Day’s head-coaching resume would be a smashing success: a 61-8 record, a College Football Playoff title game appearance, 12 first-round
NFL draft picks, a perennial top-10 ranking and just three Big Ten losses over five seasons. But because those conference losses were all to Michigan, each of the past three Novembers, those were considered lost seasons in Columbus.
After the Buckeyes scored three points in the Cotton Bowl, Day met with then-athletic director Gene Smith. A lot was discussed, but part of it was Smith’s willingness to go all-in on football and give Day the resources he needed to right the ship, including a larger salary pool for assistants.
“I wanted to make sure that we did everything we could to make sure football has a real chance next year,” said Smith, who retired June 30 after a 19-year tenure. “When I think about my legacy, I think about that. I hate to leave Ohio State when football is not back to winning Big Ten championships.”
