Chip Kelly is UCLA’s new head coach, so here are 3 looming questions

UCLA has officially hired Chip Kelly, recent head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles, but more notably the former offensive mastermind and head coach of the Oregon Ducks who amassed a ridiculous 46-7 record during his tenure, including a national championship appearance and three conference titles.

Now that Kelly is heading to Westwood, there are (at least) three enormous questions that will be answered in the short, medium, and long term.

When Kelly assumed the role of head coach in Eugene, he kept nearly every assistant from the Mike Bellotti era, which helped him to make a seamless transition to head coach. His only hires were Scott Frost as WR coach, Jerry Azzinaro as DL coach, and Mark Helfrich as OC (replacing Kelly himself).

Given what we know about his time in Eugene and beyond, Kelly is fiercely loyal (he brought Azzinaro and Oregon support staff with him to the NFL), which could make for reunions with former assistants familiar with Kelly’s style, including:

UCLA assistant jobs under Kelly will be hotly sought, given the success of former assistants like UCF head coach Frost. But it’s fair to assume, for both cultural and recruiting reasons (as the Bruins compete with USC, Stanford, Oregon, and Washington for local blue-chips), the new staff will look a good deal younger than his Oregon staff, which was mostly made up of older assistants who had spent decades in Eugene, continuity nearly unheard of in the sport.

It’s natural to picture Kelly picking up where he left off at Oregon, orchestrating a run-first spread offense at high speed, but it’s important to remember that the former Duck head coach had two years to recruit to and perfect the offense as the offensive coordinator before fully unleashing his system as head coach in 2009.

With the assumption that current UCLA QB and probable high first round pick Josh Rosen won’t be around in 2018, it appears UCLA’s offense moving forward will be in the hands of QB Devon Modster (a former blue chip “pro-style” QB and 2017 backup). Or, if the Bruins get an expected signature on Signing Day, blue-chip dual threat QB commit Dorian Thompson-Robinson would perhaps better suited with Kelly’s QB track record.

Kelly and his offensive staff will take over a unit with promising skill talent, consistently disappointing OL play (especially in the run game), and a collection of players recruited to a more traditional, under-center, “pro-style” offense under recently fired head coach Jim Mora. Expect early growing pains.

It’s not unreasonable to assume Kelly will employ tactics that consistently worked in Eugene, mixed with influences that worked in the NFL, even with lesser talent at QB like Nick Foles in Philadelphia. Does this mean UCLA fans should expect an immediate continuation of Eugene’s success, with players like Marcus Mariota, LaMichael James, and Kenjon Barner lighting up the scoreboard? Certainly not right away, but it’s hard to imagine he’d ignore what helped Oregon reach its heights, so expect UCLA to get better running the ball in 2018.

Defensively, it appears Kelly prefers a two-gap alignment up front (he explains details here), meaning defensive linemen tend to try and occupy space and blockers while others make plays on the ball. At Oregon, Azzinaro and retired coordinator Nick Aliotti (who had his own stint at UCLA in the ‘90s) ran out an underrated and unpredictable defense (the 2012 Ducks finished 2nd in the country in S&P+ defense, behind only Alabama) that didn’t receive the recognition of Oregon’s offense.

With Kelly still linked to a controversy and an (expired) NCAA penalty surrounding his careless use of a personal check with a recruiting coordinator and accusations of buying influence, the question of recruiting hovers. Even though Oregon finished with consistently good classes (12th, 12th, 14th in his full recruiting cycles, per 247 Sports), there seemed to always be reports of Kelly preferring the day-to-day of coaching, running a program, and gameplanning over administrative duties, a challenge at Oregon, given the school’s distance from top talent.

Kelly will most likely hire assistants with top recruiting bona fides, no matter their geographic background, though it’s safe to say he’ll have a faction of coaches with recruiting experience and connections in talent-stocked Southern California.

Big picture: recruiting concerns are probably overblown, especially since Kelly’s job attracting talent to UCLA will be easier than it was at Oregon. And more importantly, he won’t be writing checks to anyone connected to the recruiting world any time soon.

With all that in mind, the biggest changes in Westwood will be the publicly unseen ones. Kelly overhauled how the Oregon program operated on a daily basis (conditioning, practices, meetings, scheduling, nutrition, among other things), and he’ll try to do the same. With UCLA’s sparkling new football facility and what UCLA was willing to pay to buy out Jim Mora and attract a huge name like Kelly, it’s clear the Bruins are developing a commitment to winning.

And now, with a coach of Kelly’s caliber in charge of staffing, recruiting, and crafting an on-field product, it might finally be winning time.