The 49ers are every bit as bad as most people feared this year, and next up is Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, immediately after the Patriots lost a tough game. That sounds like soul-crushing scenario of impending doom, but not to Chip Kelly.
I think if you’re a competitor you get excited about playing in games like this. You don’t think of it as, ‘Oh my god, we don’t have any hope.’ You get a chance to play against Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. If that doesn’t get your blood boiling, then you’re in the wrong sport.
There is another reason Chip is motivated beyond sheer love of competition, though. The coach has a long running bond with Belichick, part of the close-knit New England coaching community in which Chip first developed his career.
You’ve probably heard about Chip meeting with Belichick at least three times back in 2010-12, when Kelly was coaching Oregon, to discuss his no huddle offense and one-word play calls. (New England used the technique to blitz several opponents on a sporadic basis.) The coaches also held joint practices during their 2013 and 2014 training camps, when they played in the preseason.
But the ties among many of the region’s coaches go back much further. Those meetings five years ago were set up by Houston Texans coach Bill O’Brien, who was calling plays for New England as QB coach and then OC. As Chip discussed before the Houston game, he and O’Brien go back to the early 1990s when both were assistant coaches in New England and would drive down to talk, play pickup basketball and hoist a couple of beers.
It helps that (aside from Maine), the schools in New England are centered closely around Boston. You can get there from here, quickly, almost anywhere in the region. Even today, Kelly jets home to the New Hampshire Seacoast region (just a couple of hours drive from Boston) whenever he has time, to hang out with his coaching buddies and family.
Belichick had met Chip even before O’Brien set up those parleys. While reporters describe him as harsh and intimidating, Belichick is generous to the region’s coaches and assistants, letting them watch practices and roam the sidelines. Word spreads quickly about successful innovations like the ones Chip developed at the University of New Hampshire, and Belichick told the media this week that he had talked with Chip even when Kelly was an assistant at UNH, before 2007.
Chip has given back by talking with — and hiring — a lot of New England assistants in his day. He has brought DL coach Jerry Azzinaro (Maine, Massachusetts, Boston College, UNH) with him to each of his head coaching jobs, and hired his own former quarterback Ryan Day as QB coach in Philadelphia and now San Francisco. He did the same for Bob Bicknell, his wide receivers coach, despite a noted lack of development by young WRs on both the Eagles and Niners (so far).
During the 1980s, Bicknell’s father Jack was the head coach at Boston College — a hub of the regional scene, especially for a Catholic kid like Kelly. Jack Bicknell helped Chip get started, hiring him to coach at BC’s football summer camps, and Chip has hired several BC guys over the years.
49ers quarterbacks coach Ryan Day exemplifies the close connections in New England’s scene. Like Chip, he played quarterback for Manchester Central High school, and moved to UNH where he played directly for Kelly. After graduating, his first job was tight ends coach for the Wildcats, working for his former coach.
By the time Chip hired him in Philadelphia, Day was offensive coordinator at Boston College, his third stint there amidst coaching jobs at Temple and Florida.
So it’s no surprise that Chip Kelly and Bill Belichick know each other and enjoy competing. Belichick’s respect is not easily earned. If the Niners clean house after this year and Patriots OC Josh McDaniels takes a head coaching job as predicted, don’t be surprised to see Chip succeed him.
That might sound like a step down, but Kelly doesn’t need the money, and he could do a lot worse than learning under his mentor, enjoying the luxury of a Hall of Fame QB, and hanging out with his friends and family in New England.