2. Chip’s offense is gimmicky and NFL defenses have caught on
Observers have been waiting to tell Chip Kelly to take his gimmicky offense back to college
since the moment he arrived on the NFL scene. With the Eagles falling to
26th in offensive DVOA and taking a step back in the win column this year, those people finally got their chance.
However, to call Kelly’s offense gimmicky is to fundamentally misunderstand the foundations of his scheme and can likely be attributed to his willingness to be different in a league that values doing things because "that’s the way they’ve always been done." Much of what gets these "NFL purists," or whatever you want to call them, in a ruckus is nothing more than fresh window dressing on the same plays every team in the NFL uses. Even before Kelly left Oregon and began to adapt his scheme to the professional game, his offense was rooted in
old-school, inside-running principles. Where Kelly’s relative uniqueness comes in is his ability to meld those old-school principles with new-age tactics like the up-tempo, no-huddle approach his teams are known for.
To say Kelly should be credited for introducing to professional football many of the concepts he’s criticized for would also be incorrect. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have been carving up defenses with the no-huddle outside of the two-minute drill for years — which also happens to be a strategy the NFL can trace back to the Bengals of the 1980s — and the Patriots began to
implement Kelly’s famed tempo back in 2012. Washington integrated spread tactics into their offense during Robert Griffin III’s rookie season with great success, and the Patriots (hmm, I’m sure it’s a coincidence they keep popping up) heavily utilized a shotgun spread approach during their record-breaking season in 2007.
More recently, a number of teams — Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Carolina, Seattle, Tennessee, and more — have implemented
run-pass options into their offensive attack that first gained popularity at the college level and were deployed by Kelly’s Eagles. Tactics attributed to Chip’s gimmicky offense have already spread throughout the league, and they’re tactics that are here to stay.
There’s also the notion that NFL defensive coordinators have caught on to Kelly’s tricks, but it’s more likely that is an overreaction to one poor season. Philadelphia had the
third-best offense in football during Kelly’s first season with the Eagles. Kelly’s sophomore effort saw a step back to 13th in offensive DVOA, but that can be largely attributed to
significant injuries at quarterback and along the offensive line after finishing 2013 as the league’s healthiest team.
It’s been a different story in 2015 with Philadelphia’s fall from 13th to 26th in DVOA, which is the fourth-largest drop in the NFL this season. But as ESPN’s Bill Barnwell
detailed back in November, Philadelphia’s struggles on offense can be more easily connected to the failings of Chip Kelly the GM rather than Chip Kelly the coach. And as Barnwell also points out, we’ve yet to see what Kelly can do with a competent quarterback. Kelly’s offense produced back-to-back above-average seasons with Mike Vick, Nick Foles, Mark Sanchez, and Matt Barkley, yet we’re ready to say his offense won’t work after one bad season with Sam Bradford under center? It all seems a bit premature.