Chip Kelly vs. Josh McDaniels
This Week 1 matchup will feature two established playcallers doing everything in their power to defeat the opposing defense.
Chip Kelly arrived to Las Vegas fresh off a national championship win with Ohio State. He also served as head coach of an explosive Oregon offense that produced three consecutive conference championships, a BCS National Championship Game berth and 2014 Heisman Trophy Winner Marcus Mariota.
Now in the Silver and Black, Kelly will unload his offensive scheme with a variety of weapons such as Brock Bowers, Amari Cooper, Jakobi Meyers and Tre Tucker. And at quarterback, he has Geno Smith leading the way – a player he actually tried recruiting to Oregon.
“Just do the right thing, make the right decisions, get the ball out of hands in rhythm on time and accurately and let the playmakers do their jobs,” Smith said when asked of his role in Kelly’s offense. “My job is to get us to the right play and make the right decision. As long as I’m doing that with the guys around me, we should be fine.”
This offseason, Josh McDaniels returned to be the Patriots offensive coordinator. He left the Patriots in 2021 to become the head coach of the Raiders, serving in that role for 25 games. In McDaniels’ 13 seasons as the Pats OC, their offense has ranked top five in both total yardage and points scored on five occasions.
“They’re physical like you would think,” Carroll said. “Josh has run the ball a lot in their history and Mike Vrabrel wants to run the football too. They’re really physical about it, the running backs run really hard and Josh has traditionally had a really downhill attack. It’s pretty classic and it’s really good.”