That Chip Kelly likes to collect former Oregon players is known. But one of his assistant coaches has seen the development of the Eagles coach first-hand and from deeper in the coach’s background.
Quarterbacks coach Ryan Day played for and coached with Kelly at New Hampshire, and grew up in the same hometown, so he has as good a perspective on his boss as anyone.
While Kelly wasn’t a head coach when they were previously together, Day said things aren’t that different.
“He’s the same guy,” Day said, via Zach Berman of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “He gives you a job to do and he lets you do your job. And he knows what’s important. When he says something to you, you better listen, because when he’s saying it to you, there’s thought behind it and it’s calculated.
“A lot of head coaches talk and micromanage, but that’s not [Kelly]. Everything he says has substance behind it and everything he does, it’s been thought about for awhile. And he knows where to put his thumb, where it’s supposed to be. That’s one of his gifts.”
And while Kelly’s fast-break offense at Oregon has become his trademark, Day said it wasn’t always that way, as Kelly experimented with many different styles.
“At that time, we were changing offenses every week,” Day said. “We would go from run-and-shoot to Wing-T to the veer. One week, we threw it six times. The next week, we threw it 65 times. It was one of those things. Coach kind of had a laboratory there, and it was a lot of fun to be around.”
That kind of willingness to try new things has shown itself in many of Kelly’s moves since taking over in Philadelphia. And that intellectual curiosity is what seems to drive him to do things in unconventional ways.
