NFL Insider Tom Pelissero: How Chip Kelly Botched His (High-Paying) Raiders OC Job | Rich Eisen Show

NFL Insider Tom Pelissero: How Chip Kelly Botched His (High-Paying) Raiders OC Job | Rich Eisen Show

As you pointed out, um, you observed in one of your posts this week, Tom, that Pete Carol’s never fired an assistant in his entire career and is now done so twice in a span of 17 days. Special teams and now offensive coordinator Chip Kelly is out. What what what is Tom Brady thinking? Because it’s really what it comes down to. Let’s be honest. Let’s let’s just boil it down. like what what what how much was he influential in the decisions of these coaching staff that that Pete is now changing middle of the season and and what decisions need to be made over the final or needs to be seen over the next six weeks to potentially make more decisions in let’s let’s let’s rewind to last January okay it had become apparent by the end of last season that Tom Brady’s number one choice was Ben Johnson that was the coach that he wanted uh he had talked about him at times in certain ways and people read into his comments on the broadcast. He had, you know, certainly, you know, spoken with him uh before games and things like that. Tom Brady is maybe not just the greatest but the smartest quarterback to ever play the game and the things that he saw Ben Johnson do were so next level in Detroit. That was the guy he wanted. And there was a bet of sorts made by the Raiders that it’s Tom Brady. Who’s going to say no to Tom Brady? So Tom was directly recruiting Ben Johnson and trying to convince him to come. The Raiders, I was told at the time, had a massive offer out to Ben Johnson. They wanted him to come in the building and go through a second interview, but it was pretty apparent if Ben wanted the job. It was Ben’s job. Well, one day after the Lions season ends, he’s on a plane to Chicago and he is taking the Bears job without even having to do an in-person interview. his performance against the Bears had kind of been his interview uh for a couple of years, but the Bears also made him a really strong offer. And I got the sense even at the time that there was no clear plan B. Not that they didn’t have different thoughts in mind about who they might uh want to interview, but they interviewed, you know, variety of coaches from different backgrounds. They they interviewed, you know, Robert Solo was somebody uh who had interviewed with them. They interviewed some other younger coaches. They interviewed some older coaches. Pete Carol philosophically, schematically, age, um, personality has virtually nothing in common with Ben Johnson. And the point I’m making is not only did you pivot in terms of the coach you hired, you completely pivoted in the way that you were trying to build it from Ben Johnson, offensive guru, he’s 39 years old or whatever, long-term answer to Pete Carol, defensive coach in his 70s, was out last year, just wants to run the football, throw it when he needs to, uh, and win with defense. It was just, it was totally different. Chip Kelly seemed like he was the bridge between the two, which was Chip had been regarded at his peak going back to Oregon and early on uh in Philadelphia as being somebody who was really really smart with offense. But what you saw was once Chip didn’t have um the players who were better than everyone else, you know, he had Deshawn Jackson, Lehan McCoy early in Philly, he made the choices to get rid of them. All of a sudden, the Eagles offense wasn’t the same. He goes to San Francisco. That offense was not the same. He’s out of the NFL. He goes back to college. Ohio State. What’s the common denominator? Better athletes than everybody else had. It took I was at the week one game. The Raiders beat the Patriots. But that’s might be the weirdest result of the entire NFL schedule. No doubt. When you when you rewind, it was kind of bumpy that day, but they made some plays. And it just seemed like from week two on, teams just kind of caught up with what the Raiders were doing. And there are all kinds of different stories, Rich, about just the the dysfunction of the Raiders offense. There were times I was told where Chip Kelly was repeatedly botching the play calls where he’s supposed to be, for instance, tagging a motion on a play. So, the receivers’s on the left, not the right. He forgets to say it. So, Gino Smith is going to the line of scrimmage and going, “This doesn’t look right.” And they’re trying to run a play. It happened on a third down in the game the other day. There’s times where Chip, I was told on several occasions, call to play that was either not in the game plan or not installed at all. Things like that happened. You’re not productive. That’s enough. You didn’t need any extra excuses. Damn. But there were a lot of things that were popping up within games that were just not anything that a good team can overcome. They didn’t have enough talent. There’s no doubt about it. Um, maybe my favorite stat of the entire season is uh there were only three players on the Raiders offense who were making more money than Chip Kelly. It was Gino Smith, Colton Miller, uh, and Ashton Genty was making like 6.1. Chip was making $6 million a year. I can’t think of another team that has a setup like that. It was always going to be a challenge for them offensively, but Chip’s scheme was supposed to elevate it, and what you saw on the field made pretty obvious. there was just there was kind of a level of chaos to it um that just made it really really hard for them to function. It makes it hard to even imagine how you move forward, you know, like what what next, you know. Well, and that’s those are the things about Brady like you got to whatever is going between those temples and obviously, you know, he’s got his um his his uh I guess Sunday job as well. Hey, you made it all the way to the end. Thanks for that. Check us out every single day streaming live on Disney Plus and the ESPN app 12 to 3 Eastern.

NFL Insider Tom Pelissero tells Rich Eisen how Chip Kelly botched his high-paying Las Vegas Raiders Offensive Coordinator job.

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