Tag: Chip Kelly

Every Eagles 1st-round NFL draft pick under GM Howie Roseman

With the 2023 NFL draft fast approaching, we’re looking at every first-round pick selected during Howie Roseman’s tenure as GM of the Philadelphia Eagles

Philadelphia has two first-round picks in the upcoming NFL draft thanks to a trade with the Saints, but they’ll still be a team to watch on April 27, with Howie Roseman likely to make another move or two in hopes of improving a retooled roster.

The draft’s first round is where teams look to find Pro Bowl talent or a consistent starter.

Roseman has hit and missed on draft picks during his tenure (2010-14, 2016-present).

We’re looking at all the first-round selections by the Eagles’ general manager during his time in Philadelphia.

Eagles to host UCLA QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson on a top 30 pre-draft visit

After having a formal meeting at the NFL scouting combine, the Philadelphia Eagles will host a top 30 predraft visit with UCLA QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson

The Eagles are about developing quarterbacks, and a player that made our NFL combine sleepers list will meet with team brass again.

After meeting with former UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson at the 2023 NFL scouting combine, the Eagles will host the dual-threat signal-caller on a top-30 predraft visit.

During his final season with former Eagles head coach Chip Kelly, Thompson-Robinson completed 69.6 percent of his passes for 3,169 yards, 27 touchdowns, and ten interceptions for the Bruins in 2022, adding 12 rushing touchdowns.

At UCLA, the 23-year-old signal-caller completed 63.3 percent of his passes for 10,710 yards, 88 touchdowns, and 36 interceptions in his five seasons.

Similar to Jalen Hurts in size and stature(6-1, 205), Thompson-Robinson was also efficient on the ground, totaling 1,826 rushing yards in his career, including a career-high 645 yards last season.

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Will Dan Lanning follow in past Oregon coaches’ footsteps with Year 2 success?

Dan Lanning is one of 5 Oregon coaches to win 10 games, and just the 3rd to do so in Year 1. Will Year 2 be just as impressive?

By almost any measure, Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning had a very successful first year in Eugene last season. He became just the fifth coach in Oregon history to notch 10 wins, and the third to do so in his first season with the team.

While there are certainly things that could have gone better — losing to rivals Oregon State and Washington in the same year is never something you want — it’s clear that Oregon fans should be encouraged and excited about what’s to come for the Ducks. Lanning has proved that he has an elite football mind, and his recruiting prowess has continued what Mario Cristobal started in Eugene, bringing some of the best players in the nation to the pacific northwest.

The question going forward will be to see how high the ceiling is in the future.

If you look back through the Oregon record books, Duck coaches have seen some great success in year two with the program. Both Chip Kelly and Mark Helfrich made it to the national championship game, while Mario Cristobal won a Rose Bowl. So how will Dan Lanning’s second season with the Ducks stack up compared to his predecessors? It’s impossible to say, but he’s on a great trajectory at the very least.

In order to get a good breakdown, I went back through what I like to refer to as the “modern era” of Oregon coaches. While the Ducks have been around since 1894, a total of 39 head coaches came through the program, oftentimes only spending one or two seasons in Eugene. Until the legendary Len Casanova came along in 1951, no single coach had spent more than 5 seasons with the program. So that’s going to be where I start our modern era. Since 1951, there have been only 11 head coaches at Oregon.

So how did those coaches fare in their second year with the program? Let’s take a look:

Where Dan Lanning, other Pac-12 coaches, rank among college football’s top 35

Oregon Ducks coach Dan Lanning was named one of college football’s 35 best head coaches, one of five Pac-12 coaches on the list.

Spring football is just starting to get underway for college programs around the country, and 247Sports used the opportunity to rank the 35 best coaches in the game right now.

Five of the top 35 come from the Pac-12 conference, including Oregon’s Dan Lanning who is set to start his second season in Eugene after a very successful first campaign which ended with a victory in the Holiday Bowl over North Carolina.

Lanning is not only one of five Pac-12 coaches on this list, he is one of three who have experience as the head coach at Oregon – alongside UCLA’s Chip Kelly and Miami’s Mario Cristobal, who comes in at number 20.

Georgia’s Kirby Smart takes home the top spot over Nick Saban, a result that may have seemed inconceivable a few years ago but makes sense after the dominance the Bulldogs showed the past two seasons.

Jim Harbaugh, Dabo Swinney and Brian Kelly round out the top five. Here is a look at the five Pac-12 coaches represented on this list:

Eagles met with UCLA QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson at NFL Combine

The Philadelphia Eagles and team brass reportedly met with former UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson

The Eagles are all about developing quarterbacks and a player that made our NFL combine sleepers list recently met with team brass.

According to Devin Jackson of The Inquirer, Philadelphia had an NFL combine meeting and greet with former UCLA quarterback, Dorian Thompson-Robinson.

During his final season with former Eagles head coach Chip Kelly, Thompson-Robinson completed 69.6 percent of his passes for 3,169 yards, 27 touchdowns, and 10 interceptions for the Bruins in 2022, adding 12 rushing touchdowns.

In total at UCLA, the 23-year-old signal-caller completed 63.3 percent of his passes for 10,710 yards, 88 touchdowns, and 36 interceptions in his five seasons.

Similar to Jalen Hurts in size and stature(6-1, 205), Thompson-Robinson was efficient on the ground as well totaling 1,826 rushing yards in his career, including a career-high 645 yards last season.

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UCLA 2023 football schedule has Bruins feeling optimistic

The UCLA Bruins have one of the more favorable Pac-12 schedules in 2023: no Oregon and no Washington.

The UCLA Bruins are still recovering from a heartbreaking Sun Bowl loss to Pittsburgh. On top of that, Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Zach Charbonnet will leave massive holes on offense, although Kent State QB Collin Shclee and five-star recruit Dante Moore make things easier.

When the 2023 Pac-12 schedule was released, the Bruins must have felt great about their slate, especially after USC got hit hard by the schedule makers in the Trojans’ final season in the conference.

The Bruins don’t face either Oregon or Washington in 2023, so that helps (h/t Jon Wilner of The Mercury News).

“The Bruins once again have a schedule built for success with a low-stress non-conference lineup — Michigan was supposed to visit the Rose Bowl but canceled — and favorable intra-league matchups,” Wilner wrote. “UCLA has a bye to recover from visiting Utah, doesn’t play Oregon or Washington and faces the Arizona schools and Cal down the stretch (along with USC).”

So, there you have it. The end of the season is a breeze, except for the game against USC, and the Bruins don’t have Washington or Oregon on the slate.

This is an easier schedule for Chip Kelly, and the Bruins have a chance to finish out the Pac-12 era with a strong season before moving to the Big Ten.

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Comparing Dan Lanning’s first recruiting class to past Oregon head coaches

Dan Lanning impressed during his first full recruiting cycle. How does his inaugural class at Oregon compare to other first-year head coaches in Eugene?

What Dan Lanning and the Oregon Ducks were able to do in the 2023 recruiting cycle was impressive by many measures. Not only did the Ducks manage to sign the No. 8 ranked class in the nation and up the level of talent on the roster two-fold over the offseason, but Lanning also etched his name in Oregon lore with one of the top-ranked recruiting classes in school history.

What makes all of that more impressive is the fact that this was Lanning’s first full recruiting class in Eugene. While his fingerprints were on the 2022 class that ranked No. 13 in the nation, Lanning was forced to play from behind a year ago after Mario Cristobal’s late departure left several top prospects to reconsider the Ducks and go elsewhere. The 2023 class was Lanning’s from start to finish, and we finally got to see what he could do with a full year to go to work.

That got me to start thinking about how Lanning’s first year compares to the first recruiting cycle for other coaches in Oregon history. There have been great recruiters in the Ducks’ past, but do their first cycles as head coach stack up to what Lanning was able to do this past year?

Let’s dive into that. Here are the top five “inaugural” recruiting classes for Oregon coaches over the past couple of decades.

How Will Stein’s contract compares to past Oregon offensive coordinators

A look at how Oregon Ducks offensive coordinator Will Stein’s contract compares to other OCs in Oregon history.

The college football world has become a more lucrative business for assistant coaches over the years.

While we know that head coaches in the sport make an astounding amount of money — guys like Jim Harbaugh, Nick Saban, and some of the other top coaches in the nation bank upwards of $10 million per year — there’s been a nice boom for coordinators in the sport as well.

Earlier this week, The Oregonian’s James Crepea reported the contract details for Will Stein, the Oregon Ducks’ new offensive coordinator, which were obtained via a public records request. According to Crepea, Stein is set to earn $800,000 per season with the Ducks, and can make up to $125,000 in bonuses should the team reach certain incentives along the way.

This encouraged me to go back as far as I could to see how Stein’s contract compared to other offensive coordinators in Oregon’s past. While the former UTSA OC is not as established as some guys before him — Kenny Dillingham, Scott Frost, Chip Kelly — does the inflation in the market that we’ve seen over the past few years have him making as much money as those coaches?

Unfortunately, I was only able to uncover contract details as far back as Scott Frost in 2013. While it would be interesting to see what guys like Mark Helfrich, Kelly, and Gary Crowton made as coordinators before him, my research capabilities stopped me short of finding out that information.

Here are Stein’s contract details compared to the OCs before him in Eugene.

How Dan Lanning fared in comparison to other Oregon first-year head coaches

Dan Lanning notched 10 wins and a bowl victory in his first season with the Ducks. How does that compare to other first-year coaches in Oregon history?

A lot of time after the end of the 2022 college football season has been spent looking at first-year head coaches and assessing how they did at their respective programs.

For Dan Lanning, the season-long grades have been quite fair, with many crediting him and his team for an impressive 10-win season that resulted in a respectable bowl win and a heap of excitement and anticipation for the future in Eugene. While a lot of time has been spent comparing Lanning to other first-year head coaches in the nation, we wanted to take a second to look back at Oregon history and see how he compares to other Oregon coaches in their first years with the Ducks.

Lanning was able to notch 10 wins, but losses to both Oregon State and Washington were tough to swallow. How does that compare to the likes of Mario Cristobal, or Mark Helfrich, or Mike Bellotti?

In order to get a good breakdown, I went back through what I like to refer to as the “modern era” of Oregon coaches. While the Ducks have been around since 1894, a total of 39 head coaches came through the program, oftentimes only spending one or two seasons in Eugene. Until the legendary Len Casanova came along in 1951, no single coach had spent more than 5 seasons with the program. So that’s going to be where I start our modern era. Since 1951, there have been only 11 head coaches at Oregon.

How did Lanning’s first year compare to the other 10 guys when it comes to the start of their tenures in Eugene? Let’s take a look:

Pac-12 Bowl Preview: UCLA has massive advantage against depleted Pitt

The UCLA Bruins’ best players aren’t opting out of the Sun Bowl. The Pittsburgh Panthers have some notable opt-outs. Better not whiff here, Bruins.

The UCLA Bruins are the last Pac-12 team to play a bowl game before Utah and USC play their own postseason games at the start of 2023.

Chip Kelly’s team faces Pittsburgh in the Sun Bowl. The Bruins should be massive favorites in what could be a lopsided contest in El Paso, Texas.

Former USC QB Kedon Slovis has now transferred to BYU after just one year at Pitt, and the Panthers will also be without star running back Israel Abanikanda, wo has opted out to prepare for the 2023 NFL draft.

Abanikanda was the focal point of the Pitt offense, finishing with 1,431 yards and 20 touchdowns, which led the FBS.

On top of that, seven other Pitt starters and significant players aren’t suiting up.

UCLA, on the other hand, will have Zach Charbonnet and Dorian Thompson-Robinson for this game despite the fact that both players are headed for the pros.

UCLA finished 14th in the nation in points per game (39.6), 6th in yards (507.8) and 11th in rushing yards (246.3), so this offense can put up points with the best of them.

That is huge for UCLA. The Panthers will decide between Nate Yarnell and Nick Patti at QB, although Pat Narduzzi said both players might see playing time.

A backup QB and backup RB for Pitt, and a loaded UCLA offense should tilt this heavily in the Bruins’ favor.

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