Nick Piccone
It’s still relatively early this NFL season, but there’s been plenty of criticism thrown Chip Kelly’s way, much of it warranted. However, Kelly started his first season in the NFL at 1-3 and finished as NFC East champions and a playoff berth. The season is still young, but it’s apparently old enough for some people to already play fantasy general manager and athletic director combined and fire Chip Kelly from the Eagles; and he inevitably will wind up at USC. Steve Sarkisian be damned.
With an overall record of 3-2, but a 1-2 conference record, there’s virtually no chance of USC being a national champion this college football season. So this narrative will be following us the rest of the college football and NFL season, regardless if the Eagles turn their season around or not.
Dan Wolken of USA Today thinks he has to be the next head coach at USC, because their season is already over.
You know it when you see it.
And what you see at Southern California nearing the halfway point of the 2015 season is the failed regime of Steve Sarkisian and a program desperately in need of Chip Kelly.
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This is what USC signed up for. Though Sarkisian gets credit for pulling Washington from 0-12 to relevance, his teams were notorious for playing well one week, then no-showing the next.
Yet USC hired him anyway, banking that his ability to recruit would be so overwhelming that it would mask any shortcomings. Nothing has changed, and Sarkisian didn’t help himself before this season when Haden had to pull him off the stage at the “Salute To Troy” preseason event due to drunken behavior in front of boosters.
It was up to Sarkisian this year to prove that he was a good enough coach to overcome mistakes. He isn’t.
The answer for USC is easy.
Easy peasy. Except for the fact that Chip Kelly has all the power a college football coach would have already in the NFL. He’s at the top of the football food chain, and would he really relinquish his current opportunity for less? Let’s face it, Chip never won in college, so there’s no definite that he’d want to return there after proving he can coach at the NFL level – we just don’t like what’s become his coaching philosophy, at least through the end of last season into the current season.
More from Wolken:
Though Chip Kelly is reportedly committed to seeing it through with the Philadelphia Eagles, there would not be a more perfect marriage between team and coach than jumping to the Trojans.
If Kelly could dominate the Pac-12 at Oregon, there is no ceiling on what he could do at USC.
The NCAA penalties that would have made it difficult for a college to hire him are over. When Kelly inevitably returns to the college game, he will instantly have the credibility and cachet to recruit at an even higher level than he ever achieved at Oregon. With the amount of skill in Southern California, USC would instantly return to its rightful place as the most feared program west of Texas.
And given a roster loaded with talented players starving for coaching competence, it wouldn’t take long for USC to get back in national title contention.
Thursday showed that this USC season is all but over. The Trojans’ administration needs to dedicate the rest of it to convincing Kelly that he’d be better off at a true college blueblood than floundering in the NFL.
Kelly is a misfit with the Eagles. He’d be a perfect fit at USC.
Kelly will inevitably return to college football, says Wolken. Inevitably. He’s already written him off as an NFL head coach. I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate to say while he’s still in his third year.
Of course, USC has been eyeing Kelly for a while now, so the connection is an easy one to make, but calling him a misfit with the Eagles? That’s our job. That’s our job to say after stunning losses to terrible teams because of the failures of his players, and at times, his playcalling. But a misfit? Nah.
While it’s way too early to count out Kelly’s NFL coaching career, it’s never too early to speculate on college football team’s next coaches, because that’s always a thing. It just so happens since Chip’s 1-3, his name is out there.