On Tuesday, Oregon fired head football coach Mark Helfrich after four seasons. Helfrich used to be the Ducks’ offensive coordinator under Chip Kelly, and he took over when Kelly left for the Philadelphia Eagles after the 2012 season.
Mark Helfrich talked to Chip Kelly about Oregon, but thinks he’ll stay in the NFL
The last two Oregon coaches discussed Kelly coming back to Eugene, but Helfrich doesn’t expect it’ll happen.
Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images
When it started to look likely Helfrich would be fired, he said, he spoke to Kelly about the prospect of the current San Francisco 49ers coach taking back his old gig. From a Helfrich appearance on ESPN Radio on Friday:
Until Helfrich, it had been four decades since Oregon had fired a head coach. Helfrich was a part of Kelly’s staff, and a bunch of Helfrich’s assistants at Oregon were also Kelly’s assistants. The same was true, apparently, of the Ducks’ support staffers. To hear Helfrich tell it, it seems he wanted Kelly to not worry about hurting his former coordinator’s feelings by returning to UO, if that was what Kelly wanted.
But in equal measure, it sounds like Kelly’s not all that up for it. He publicly denied interest in a return after Helfrich was let go, and everything he’s told reporters suggests he’d like to stay in the NFL. Kelly is 1-10 in his first year in San Francisco. His three seasons with the Eagles ended with a firing near the end of last year.
Kelly arrived at Oregon as the Ducks’ offensive coordinator in 2007. He worked in that role under Mike Bellotti for two seasons, then was elevated to head coach when Bellotti resigned and became the school’s athletic director.
Kelly went 46-7 in four seasons, with the best win percentage any coach has ever had at Oregon. He won the Rose and Fiesta Bowl in his last two years there and made a BCS bowl each season.
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