Well, this mess has only grown into more of a mess. On Monday afternoon following the decision to fire Chip Kelly, Jay Glazer reported that he had spoken with Chip Kelly, and the now former 49ers head coach had know “for weeks and weeks and weeks” that Trent Baalke was undermining him. On Tuesday afternoon, Glazer retracted a portion of what he said, saying that Kelly didn’t tell him that, but rather, Glazer heard it from several other people.
Wanna clarify, Chip never told me Trent undercut him. I did, however, hear it from several others. Chip told me he wants to coach in NFL & would even take an OC job
First off, here is that portion of Glazer’s comments, the video of which you can watch here.
He’s learned from the Philly thing. I talked to him last night, I’ve talked to him for the last few days. When he got brought in there by Jed York, here’s what happened. For weeks and weeks and weeks, he’s known that Trent Baalke has been trying to undermine him and get him out. And other people said, go in there and defend yourself. And he’s kinda learned from the Philly thing, I’m not gonna do that. I’m just gonna go, I’m gonna coach, I have my chance.
My guess is to some extent this is what happens when you’re talking on live TV. Sometimes you can misspeak, I get that.
At the same time, it is also possible this is damage control. Chip Kelly spoke with Matt Maiocco about the comments, and he made himself pretty clear.
“I enjoyed my interaction with Trent,” Kelly told CSNBayArea.com on Wednesday morning. “I thought we had a good working relationship. You saw us on the practice field. We talked a lot and got along. I don’t know why people are talking about this.”
When asked about Glazer’s report on them talking about the situation, Kelly had this to say:
“That’s not the way I do things,” Kelly said on Wednesday. “I don’t talk about other people. If you want to talk to me about my team, I’ll do that. But I never get into that kind of nit-picking. You saw me all year. I don’t talk about stuff like that. I coach the guys.”
As is almost always the case with situations like this, we are never going to get undisputed evidence of anything. There will almost assuredly be no smoking gun about someone undermining somebody else. I would be somewhat inclined to believe Chip Kelly, but considering none of us know him directly any more than what we saw during press conferences, we are just left to speculate.
Kelly told Maiocco that he is not going to jump right into a job somewhere else. There is some speculation college programs might be willing to make a coaching change now if he is willing to jump on board. The problem with doing it this year is he and the program would be behind the curve on the recruiting trail. A Kelly addition would help in recruiting in the long term, but in the short term, there could be problems. I could see him doing some consulting for this year, and then taking a college job next year.