Geno Smith is having arguably the worst season of his NFL career, and the Raiders may be a week or two from turning to Kenny Pickett.
Through the first five weeks of the season, Smith has made uncharacteristically bad decisions and leads the league in interceptions with nine. The veteran quarterback has rarely looked comfortable in game situations and hasn’t performed anything like the player he was in Seattle.
While the coaching staff in Las Vegas is working to find a solution, ESPN’s Dan Graziano says there aren’t many around the league who have come away impressed with Chip Kelly’s scheme.
“What I’m hearing from a lot from people around the league is that offensive coordinator Chip Kelly’s scheme isn’t creating enough advantages to overcome the Raiders’ personnel deficiencies, and there’s no margin for error if Smith keeps turning the ball over as much as he has,” Graziano reported on Wednesday.
At a reported $6 million per year, Kelly is the highest paid offensive coordinator in the NFL, and don’t be surprised if he becomes a focal point of criticism in the weeks ahead. Kelly was called out by a few analysts in the first month of the season and there has been some behind-the-scenes finger pointing, as well.
Pete Carroll and Smith have taken most of the heat lately, but Kelly might be the one to watch going forward. There are strong opinions on Kelly around the league, and some believe he’s one of the most overrated offensive coaches in the sport.
If the Raiders don’t improve on offense, it would be a surprise to see Carroll take the side of his $6 million offensive coordinator over his hand-picked quarterback who cost the team a third-round pick and at least $66.5 million in guaranteed money.
Keep an eye on the Chip Kelly storylines, because they might be getting ready to pick up serious momentum.
Prior to the Raiders’ week 3 game against the Washington Commanders, former NFL tight end Logan Paulsen talked about Kelly’s offense, and he was specific about what he doesn’t like about Kelly’s scheme at the NFL level…
Paulsen believes Chip Kelly’s offense is not as effective at the highest level because of the NFL’s speed and wider hash marks
“This is going to sound mean, but I don’t mean it to be in a mean way. This is like, it feels like a very collegey offense,” Paulsen said on the Take Command podcast. “It’s the spacing, the formations, the distribution, all feels very ‘collegy.’”
“One of the things in college is like you have these wider hash marks. You have these wider hash marks. When you run your RPOs, when you run your little bubble screen… when you run that seam that gets picked off against the Chargers… That works when you’re in college, when you’re on the left hash and the safety has to cover all this ground to get over top of the three-receiver set,” Paulson continued.
“Here, because of the hash marks, the safeties have to cover less ground, the linebackers don’t have to displace as far for the RPO… In college, that works really well because that guy’s displaced like four yards farther than he is in the NFL. You’re running and then that guy’s unblocked and he ends up making the tackle because not only is he closer, but guys in the NFL, linebackers specifically, secondary players, strong safeties, hook players are way, way faster. I do think there’s this simplistic element to the run game.”
Paulsen said Kelly’s offense doesn’t create good angles with formations.
“You look at really well-designed run games in the NFL [and] I think you look at Green Bay, you look at San Francisco as a good example. Baltimore does a great job in terms of creating good angles with formation, with receivers. There’s not a lot of that going on [with the Raiders],” Paulsen said.
“You can tell that Chip Kelly really wants to rely on the RPO to create and distribute the field and create space, but it’s not distributing the same way that it was when he was at Ohio State last year. I think you get some really tough matchups in the run game in terms of angles on combinations, and you get a lot of free runners because you’re not getting the same displacement because RPO. As a result, Ashton Jeanty is getting hit in the backfield a lot.”
Paulsen called Kelly’s route distributions “college stuff.”
“Even on the route distributions and stuff, it’s very vertical into the defense. There’s not a lot of cross releases [in the Raiders’ offense]. The timing and the spacing, it feels like college stuff in the sense where you don’t get like these spray releases. You’re not stressing hook players. It’s vertical, get to your spot,” Paulson said.
“And again, in college, it works because you have five more yards of grass that the defense has to defend over there. Here, the throwing windows are so much tighter.”
Paulsen’s full breakdown of Kelly’s offense can be watched below.
x: @raidersbeat
I’m not gonna judge Chip w/o a real quarterback.
Klint Kubiak, who id take in a second as HC, had the best offense with Carr last year, then they got injured. He gets let go & now he’s lighting it up in Seattle
Yeah, I think that’s totally fair. Too early to call it on Chip Kelly, but….
Isn’t it another example of Mark Davis’ Raiders going with the famous guy over a possible, up-and-comer? The Raiders are just not that good, but I sure think they’re a lot better with Kubiak and Darnold than the status quo.
Us fans could run this organization better than Mark & Brady could. I firmly believe that
How is anyone going to blame the scheme when you got a team full of players that don’t produce. Why does Donte Thornton start? He does NOTHING. Bowers and Mayer battling injuries, a QB who is blind and throws pick after pick, an offensive line that can’t block a high school team, and people are blaming the scheme?
That is wild.
You’re definitely right about those points, but Chip is definitely a part of the problem as well. The roster decisions have basically been a disaster all year. IMO the only real productive contributer has been Chinn. The entire draft class has been an abject failure. The entire coaching staff has been as well. Everything this year that could go completely wrong has and it started with Mark selling part of the team at big discounted rate to Brady and then entrusting him to be over all football related matters.
Geno Smith makes bad decisions. He almost refuses to scramble, he holds the ball too long and takes sacks making the offensive line look worse than they are and he thinks he can make all the throws and obviously can’t. Defensive coaches are able to draw up schemes and put in defenses that fool Smith into throwing picks. Kelly is overrated and should never have been hired but neither should have Smith. Smith is going to be one of those Raider players never allowed back in the building once he’s gone.