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https://theringer.com/chip-kelly-san-francisco-49ers-offense-f332f053870e#.osxxgp5o7
great read by Smart Football's Chris Brown. the why and how to Chip's offensive demise, and it's not just his dismissive attitude towards personnel. some of the best parts:
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...But another element is that while the no-huddle works in the NFL — and Kelly’s 2013 opponents were largely unprepared for Kelly’s pace — it’s not as effective as it is in college football for a very simple reason: The NFL doesn’t permit teams to ever reach the warp speeds Kelly’s Oregon teams typically operated at.
“In the NFL, what they did is the officials stand over the ball until the officials are ready to call the game,” Alabama head coach (and Kelly friend) Nick Saban explained in 2014. “The coach at Philadelphia ran 83 plays a game at Oregon, and runs 65 a game in Philadelphia...when they went to Philadelphia in the NFL and they were going so fast, the officials said, ‘We control the pace of the game.’ The league said, ‘The officials control the pace of the game, not a coach.’”
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In the NFL, Kelly seems to have gone out of his way to start immobile QBs, drafting Matt Barkley, signing Mark Sanchez (twice!), and trading for Sam Bradford. If Kelly wants to de-emphasize the read-option, then his offense must evolve to counterbalance the loss of a potent tactic.
Instead, Kelly’s answer has been to simply run plays that look like read-options, but without any reads or options. This has not gone well.
Kelly once said that the shotgun inside zone “is not a great play if the quarterback hands off to the running back and everyone in the stadium knows who has the ball.” He was right, and his NFL offense is now proof.
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The alignment of the tight end and running back gives away the play: If the tight end and running back lined up on opposite sides of the line, Kelly’s team ran a sweep toward the tight end; if they lined up on the same side, it was an inside zone away from the tight end. This giveaway hasn’t always been in Kelly’s offense, but as he phased out read-options he increasingly kept the tight end backside to block the defensive end on inside zone plays.
“We knew what plays were coming,” Seahawks linebacker Bobby Wagner said after the game. “Their offense is kind of predictable. They have a lot of plays where they can only run one way.”
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It’s impossible to win in the NFL if the defense knows the play beforehand. But for Kelly, the problem is amplified because of his tempo: If you stop Kelly’s offense, you also stop his team.
“Chip Kelly is a friend, but I could not run the offense he runs,” Stanford head coach David Shaw said this summer at a coaching clinic. “If you run an up-tempo offense, you better be good at staying on the field. If you cannot get first downs, your defense will play the entire game.”
Indeed, the 2015 Eagles defense defended an incredible 1,148 plays, while the team that defended the fewest, the Seahawks, played just 947 snaps. At an NFL average of around 65 plays a game, Kelly’s defense effectively played three more games than Seattle’s. --------
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