Tag: Chip Kelly

DeShaun Foster sports “WE’RE IN LA” shirt at fall camp

DeShaun Foster’s shirt is perfect.

Today marked the first day of fall practice for the UCLA Bruins in their much anticipated first season under new head coach DeShaun Foster.

For Foster and Co., fall practices involved a heavy dose of situational football, conditioning, and defensive and offensive installation. When taking the stand at practice, Foster sported a UCLA football shirt with an interesting message. The Nike t-shirt, which features an outline of California reads: WE’RE IN LA.

Was Foster’s shirt another recruiting tactic for prospective recruits?

Much has been said about the Bruins’ recruiting record since Chip Kelly’s tenure with UCLA and even more since the hiring of Foster. But with Foster following current trends in recruiting and going hard at selling recruits on the team culture, his shirt indicates he believes Los Angeles is a massive selling point.

In their first season in the BIG 10, the Bruins have the work cut out for themselves. UCLA faces a tougher schedule, going head-to-head with some of college football’s heavy hitters. But if the Bruins can overachieve in their first season under Foster, they could potentially raise some eyebrows and attract some highly sought-after recruits in the process.

UCLA Bruins Football players praise former head coach Chip Kelly

Chip Kelly, the former UCLA Bruins football coach received high praise from his former players at Big Ten media day.

Big Ten media day has come and gone, and players and coaches throughout the conference had plenty to say. DeShaun Foster, the head coach at UCLA was laughed at for his opening statements. But, several were asked about their former head coach Chip Kelly.

Kelly was at UCLA from 2018-2023 and went 35-34 over those six seasons, and went 26-26 in Pac-12 play. The Bruins went to a big game the last three seasons, including a win last season. After the season was over, he announced he was going to go to Ohio State and be the offensive coordinator for Ryan Day.

Defensive tackle Jay Toia was one of the ones who spoke and had this to say about his former coach:

“I think we’re just happy for him. Happy that he’s in a situation where he can be offensive coordinator at The Ohio State. Ohio State’s a really big program historically. So we’re just all happy for him and he did what he thought was best for him and his family.”

Coach Foster was also asked about Kelly and had this to say:

“They’re getting a good coach. Somebody that’s well-versed in football. Really knows a lot of ball. Great play caller. Going to run the rock. So I’m excited to see what Coach is going to do. He’s somebody, when he has a lot of talent, things go really well fast. So I’m excited to see what he’s going to do.”

UCLA and Ohio State are not slated to play in football this season.

UCLA commit Jadyn Hudson praises DeShaun Foster

Hudson praises the UCLA HC.

It has been a wild ride for new Bruins head coach DeShaun Foster. After getting the job following the departure of Chip Kelly, all signs indicate that he has changed the culture of the program. This week, one of his commits backed that up.

2025 safety commit Jadyn Hudson praised Foster this week, saying, “Coach Foster is changing things. I like who he is, and he is going to turn UCLA around. The players love him.”

Hudson’s comments come on the heels of scrutiny and several rankings, putting Foster and the Bruins at the bottom of several prominent BIG 10 lists. That said, with the support of his players, Foster could turn some heads during the 2024 season.

Moreover, the Bruins under Kelly had a disengaged feeling at times during 2023. Striking out several times in recruiting and looking to jump ship back to the NFL, the Bruins needed a change in the coaching position. Perhaps, despite some of the projections, the Bruins overachieve and strengthen their case in recruiting battles under Foster this season.

Ohio State tabs former Chip Kelly hire as analyst

He follows Chip to Columbus.

The UCLA Bruins saw Chip Kelly leave Westwood to become the offensive coordinator for the Ohio State Buckeyes. Kelly is now bringing in a former coach he hired when he was at UCLA. Billy Fessler, who was hired as the quarterbacks coach at the beginning of the 2024 year, is now joining Ohio State’s staff, per Doug Samuels of Football Scoop.

“Now Fessler is reportedly set to join the Buckeyes staff, reuniting with Kelly and also rejoining the Buckeye program he once served as a graduate assistant for.”

Fessler previously had stops at Slippery Rock (D-II – PA), Mississippi State, and Ohio State before going to Akron, and he was expected to be a big hire for UCLA.

But, now he follows Chip Kelly to Columbus. 

Pete Thamel of ESPN mentioned Fessler is coming in as an analyst to work with quarterbacks.

This is another chapter in the UCLA to Ohio State pipeline.

Oregon Ducks named one of most influential teams in history of college football

Chip Kelly’s first season in Eugene as the offensive coordinator changed Duck history and college football forever.

Mike Belotti’s coaching career was going fairly smoothly at Oregon in 2006, but the offense was growing a bit stagnant. The Ducks were welcoming one of the more mobile quarterbacks that contained an absolute gun for an arm in Dennis Dixon.

In order to take advantage of his unique skillset, Bellotti hired a no-name offensive coordinator from New Hampshire and unknowingly changed the history of not only Duck football history, but college football history.

That coach of course is Chip Kelly.

His unique style of offense propelled Oregon to a 9-4 record and the Ducks were No. 2 in the nation before Dixon got hurt. But the style of offense was there and it took a few years for opposing defenses to catch up.

All of this made ESPN name the 2007 team as the No. 15 most influential team ($) in college football history. According to writer Bill Connelly, the Ducks gave the entire sport a jolt of energy.

There might not have been a more symbolic moment for the spread offense revolution than watching Oregon gain 624 yards and score 39 points, including a Dixon touchdown on a fake Statue of Liberty play on Michigan and its old-school defense early that season. — Bill Connelly

There have been many other influential Oregon teams, such as the Marcus Mariota teams or the Bo Nix teams, but there’s no debate that Chip Kelly, Dennis Dixon, and Jonathan Stewart changed the game.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]

Chip Kelly making lots of money as Ohio State OC after leaving UCLA

Chip Kelly is getting lots of money this year.

It has been a few months since Chip Kelly shockingly left as UCLA Bruins football head coach to take the offensive coordinator job at Ohio State.

Leaving a Power Five program head coaching position for an assistant role was a bit of a surprise, although Kelly’s time in Westwood likely was running out either way.

The highest-paid offensive coordinator list was released from Pro Football Focus, and Kelly was second on the list, making $2 million this season in Columbus.

The highest-paid OC is Notre Dame’s Mike Denbrock, followed right behind by Kelly. Garrett Riley and Bobby Petrino are other notable names on this list.

Chip Kelly spoke about the decision to leave UCLA to go to Ohio State, and the Big Ten showdown will be interesting with four new teams in the conference.

It will be interesting to see how the Buckeyes offense looks with Kelly calling the plays. Either way, UCLA fans are happy DeShaun Foster has taken over and turned over a new leaf in Westwood.

Chip Kelly, Pete Carroll never got to develop a rivalry at Oregon, USC

The Pac-12 would have been so much more fun if Pete Carroll faced Chip Kelly for five years.

One of the great regrets of Pac-12 football is that Chip Kelly and Pete Carroll were never able to settle into a five- or six-year period in which they were matching wits with each other at Oregon and USC. Just imagine what it would have been like to have Kelly as the ultimate offensive guru versus Carroll’s defensive mind in a series of high-stakes showdowns.

As we all know, Carroll left USC after the 2009 college football season to go to the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL with the NCAA bearing down on the Trojans in a witch hunt. Kelly took over at Oregon in 2009 and began to catapult Oregon to top-tier status in the Pac-12 and in college football. Oregon played in the 2010 season’s BCS National Championship Game and was a factor in subsequent national title races. USC declined immediately after Carroll’s departure, hit by those unfair NCAA sanctions.

We discuss the late 2000s and early 2010s as they relate to USC and Oregon football history in our recent show with Ducks Wire editor Zac Neel and staff writer Don Smalley. Here’s the show:

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire. Follow our newest sites, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.

Check out more NFL draft coverage with the USA TODAY Sports NFL Draft Hub.

DeShaun Foster ranks last in CBS Sports Power 4 coach rankings

Nowhere to go but up.

Being the new guy can come with its downsides. For UCLA’s newest head coach, DeShaun Foster, he knows this all too well.

After a smattering of rankings that showed UCLA near the bottom of the BIG 10, the hits kept coming. This week, a ranking by CBS Sports writer Tom Fornelli has Foster as the lowest-ranked Power Four coach. 

Fornelli writes of Foster, ” Somebody has to be ranked last, and as is usually the case, it’s a newcomer who has yet to coach a game. Foster is in a unique spot. He was the choice to replace Chip Kelly at UCLA, and not only is he stepping into the head coaching spot for the first time (he’s been an assistant and former player“

Though his critiques of Foster are fair, they do eschew the potential that he brings to the program and the rebirth of excitement surrounding the team since Chip Kelly’s departure. 

On top of trying to improve the team in 2024, Foster and Co. will look to prove the doubters wrong as they approach the start of the season this fall. 

Kenjon Barner responds to degrading comments on former Oregon coach Chip Kelly

Kenjon Barner and Jonathan Stewart aren’t hearing the degrading comments about their former coach Chip Kelly.

Former Oregon Ducks head coach Chip Kelly has found himself in the news cycle quite a bit over the last six months.

The most notable occurrence came when Kelly made that somewhat surprising jump from head coach of the UCLA Bruins to take over as the new offensive coordinator for the Ohio State Buckeyes, a move that is rarely seen at the power conference level in college football. This past week, though, Kelly once again saw his name in circulation after a pair of his former players, Philadelphia Eagles greats DeSean Jackson and LeSean McCoy, discussed him on their new podcast “The 25/10 Show” in an episode titled “The Truth about Chip Kelly.”

Long story short, the pair of former Eagles aren’t big fans of their onetime coach.

The two discussed the frustrations of Kelly’s coaching style and roster management, but the most damning remarks came with the insinuation that Kelly had a problem dealing with black athletes and often treated them differently. Jackson proclaimed Kelly often displayed discomfort when dealing with black players on the team and showed favoritism to the white athletes.

This is not something that Kenjon Barner or Jonathan Stewart — two players who spent time with Chip Kelly with the Oregon Ducks — agree with. This week on “The Sco-ing Long Podcast” both former Ducks talked about their experience with Kelly, and their views on his coaching style.

“I’ve never, for me, felt like Chip Kelly did not like black people, or had a problem with black athletes,” said Barner, who also played for Kelly with the Eagles. “The narrative of him not liking black folks, I don’t buy into that. I don’t know that to be true, and I would never be in agreement with that being said because I know what that man was for me.”

While anyone who has spent time around Kelly will tell you he has his quirks and is sometimes difficult to get along with, Barner claims that this in no way means that he has racist tendencies or takes issue with black athletes. From his time playing under Kelly as an 18-year-old to their experience at the NFL level together, Barner says that Kelly never changed.

“I’ve had the opportunity to know Chip since I was 18 years old,” Barner said.”The same man that I met then was the same man that I played for in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles, I know him to be no different. So to me, he was the same guy, but to somebody who was just meeting him, he’s going to come off different.”

Stewart, on the other hand, only spent one year with Kelly when he was the offensive coordinator at Oregon under Mike Bellotti. He says Kelly was always a standup guy who was true to his word, but the tendencies that led to his success at the college level didn’t necessarily translate to the NFL level.

“When I start hearing things about how he was as an NFL coach, my thought process was ‘Well this is different than college,’” Stewart said. “You can’t really run in the NFL like a college coach, because you’re dealing with grown men who’ve got kids at the house, they’re paying taxes, they’ve got food to put on the table, so you can’t really just talk to people any kind of way and expect the same outcome.”

One of the bigger points of contention that both Jackson and McCoy had with Kelly was for his roster management. During his short stint in Philadelphia, one of Kelly’s first moves was to release Jackson the year after his Pro Bowl season. He soon after traded McCoy to the Buffalo Bills for linebacker Kiko Alonso.

[lawrence-related id=61350]

On the surface, these moves may be head-scratchers, but Barner sees the logic in all of it for a head coach who is trying to establish himself.

“If I’m a coach and I feel like someone is a detriment to my team, I have to make a decision,” Barner said. “People may not like it or may not agree with it, but if I feel like I can’t be the coach that I need to be, or if someone is standing in the way of me being the coach of this team or is going against my message, then I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. This is business.”

Depending on your experience with Kelly, your opinion may differ on his coaching tactics, and his leadership abilities. But from a pair of players who have known Kelly for a long time, and one who played under him at multiple stops, there seems to be no concern about his character or his motives.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]

UCLA one of 14 Power 5 football teams with new head coach

Lots of new coaches in Power Five.

The hiring of DeShaun Foster is now old news, with spring football starting, recruiting, and transfer portal news dwarfing the UCLA news cycle. But the Bruins are not the only team with a new head coach. 

Joining the Bruins in Power 5 conferences with new head coaches are Washington, Alabama, Michigan, Michigan State, Houston, Boston College, Duke, Arizona, Syracuse, Northwestern, Indiana, Mississippi State, and Texas A&M.

Notably, Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, Indiana, and Washington join the Bruins as teams in the BIG 10 with new head coaches at the helm. 

Though the Bruins project to fall somewhere near the bottom of the BIG 10 in 2024, do not rule out some of their BIG 10 contemporaries have some struggles, as well, with their new head coaches.  

The one thing that could hurt the Bruins is their roster. With former head coach Chip Kelly struggling to keep the pipeline going while in Westwood, the Bruins lag behind in the BIG 10.

But if the Bruins’ efforts in recruiting and the transfer portal prove to be successful, the narrative surrounding them and their team could change in a heartbeat.