Chip Kelly's debut season as offensive coordinator for the Raiders swiftly ended last week when the organization fired him following an ugly loss to the Browns.
Kelly's stint with the black-and-silver lasted just 11 games, during the span of which the Raiders finished in the bottom of the league in total yards and points per game. In the wake of Kelly getting fired, NFL insider Tom Pelissero relayed a concerning tale of Kelly "botching" play calls during games.
"There are all kinds of different stories about just the dysfunction of the Raiders offense," Pelissero said on The Rich Eisen Show (around the 3:50 mark). "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 receiver's on the left, not the right. He forgets to say it, so Geno Smith was going to the line of scrimmage and saying, 'This doesn't look right.' And they're trying to run a play.
"There's times where Chip—I was told on several occasions—called a play that was either not in the game plan or not installed at all. ... There were a lot of things popping up within games that were just not anything a good team can overcome."
Pelissero's report of the Raiders' dysfunction before firing Kelly mostly lines up with with what The Athletic's Dianna Russini reported this week. Russini said Raiders minority Tom Brady had originally backed Kelly to run the offense, but as the season dragged on, he "shared with some people close to him his disappointment in the team’s overall performance. His frustrations go beyond the offense, too."
What was supposed to be a year of change for the Raiders under new coach Pete Carroll and quarterback Geno Smith has unfortunately looked like more of the same for the down-bad Raiders, who are currently 2-9 and in last place in the AFC West. It'll be interesting to see what Brady and the Raiders' leadership decide to do after this season amid a regrettable chapter in Las Vegas' franchise history.
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