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Chip Kelly & Pete Carroll of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Last year, the Las Vegas Raiders went into the season with an underwhelming offensive coordinator in Luke Getsy. Instead of going with another lackluster hire, new head coach Pete Carroll brought in Chip Kelly as his offensive coordinator and made him the highest-paid assistant coach in the NFL.
While Kelly hasn’t been in the NFL since 2016, his playcalling has evolved quite a bit in recent years. There’s a lot of excitement about what he can do now that he’s back in the league.
The problem is that if he does a great job and builds a top-10 offense in Las Vegas, other teams might want to poach him to be their head coach. ESPN’s Seth Walder made a bold prediction for the 2025 season for the Raiders, and he believes that Kelly is going to be one-and-done in Las Vegas.
“Kelly will be an NFL head coach in 2026,” Walder wrote. “OK, technically that isn’t a bold prediction for 2025, but there’s no way Kelly will land another head coaching job unless his Raiders offense in 2025 does well. Once it does, owners will zoom out and look at that, his success at Ohio State, his time as UCLA’s head coach and parts of his previous NFL tenure and think: That’s a pretty good résumé!”
Does Kelly Want to Be a Head Coach?
Kelly was a head coach at the college and NFL levels from 2009 to 2023. He wasn’t fired by UCLA at his latest head coaching job. He willingly walked away to be the offensive coordinator at Ohio State.
It stands to reason that he might just not want to be a head coach anymore. He went 8-23 combined in his last two seasons as an NFL head coach. While that was a long time ago, does he really want to jump back into that so quickly?
He had UCLA headed in the right direction, but didn’t want to be the man in charge anymore. Also, NFL teams might be reluctant to hire him, considering how his stints with the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers went.
Now, if he has the Raiders offense humming, there will be interest. At the end of the day, Kelly is going to have a hard time turning down big money if a team offers it to him.
Raiders Believe They Have Major Upgrade at OC
The Raiders had one of the worst offenses and quarterback situations in the NFL this offseason. With Geno Smith and Kelly coming aboard, the team feels much better about their situation, per Tashan Reed of The Athletic.
“Smith was still solid last year, but he turned the ball over far too frequently and struggled to find consistent success in the red zone,” Reed wrote. “That was reflective of a need for him to make better decisions, but also the fact that he was operating within substandard circumstances.
“The Seahawks couldn’t run the ball well, struggled to pass protect and had a play caller who never quite found his groove. The Raiders believe the presence of Ashton Jeanty will boost their run game. They also expect the offensive line to take a step forward and view Chip Kelly as a major upgrade at offensive coordinator. If that all comes to fruition, Smith will have a more ideal setup to work from.”