Chip Kelly bouncing back after disappointing season with Raiders
A year ago at this time, Chip Kelly was well on his way to becoming public enemy no. 1 in Las Vegas for his failed efforts with the Raiders offense.
Not even a year into a reported three-year, $18 million coordinator deal with the Raiders, Kelly was fired on November 23, 2025, and his stock as a coach had never been lower.
After taking a short time off, Kelly was hired by Northwestern University on December 30 to be their next offensive coordinator.
Considering his resume, the Northwestern job was a step down in Kelly’s coaching career, but he seems to have stumbled into something special in Evanston, Illinois.
Through four games, Northwestern is 3-1 and narrowly lost to defending champion Indiana two weeks ago. On Friday, they beat Penn State 34-13 and ran for 413 yards (7.5 yards per carry) in the process.
Where did it go wrong for Kelly with the Raiders?
There was plenty of blame to pass around last year, but there’s no question Pete Carroll’s coaching staff was put together in all the wrong ways.
According to reports, Carroll did not get to pick his offensive coordinator (Kelly was not who he wanted) and a report on Saturday said Kelly would not have picked Carroll’s son to be his offensive line coach.
Kelly wasn’t a good fit with Carroll, but Brennan Carroll was widely considered unqualified for his role as offensive line coach.
Not long ago, Richie Incognito shared what he heard from the locker room last year and talked about the upgrade the Raiders have in offensive line coach Rick Dennison.
Incognito didn’t mention the younger Carroll, but based on his comments, it doesn’t sound like the locker room was particularly impressed Brennan Carroll a year ago.
“We’ve got a lot of youth up front, so for a coach like Rick Dennison to come in with his pedigree and all his coaching, we were together in Buffalo in 2017. He was the offensive coordinator the year we broke the playoff drought, and I know he is a highly detailed guy. He can teach these guys technique and that’s the one thing that was missing last year was the teaching component,” Incognito said on Raider Nation Radio’s Unnecessary Roughness with Q Myers last month.
“Talking to the guys, they were really frustrated. Our group of guys, they worked really hard on the offensive line and throughout the entire Raiders team. These guys work hard and their frustration last year was they are putting in all this time, they’re not getting the results on the field, but they really felt like they weren’t getting coached up in the meeting rooms, so there was a lot of frustration.”
“I think that frustration is completely gone with a guy like Rick Dennison. He is highly detailed. He’s all about fundamentals. He’s going to get these guys all on the same page and you could see it in the preseason. You could see the double teams happening, the bodies hitting the floor. The backs hitting the holes, so it’s an exciting time.”
x: @raidersbeat
Kelly was NEVER the Problem…
Pete (The Liar, Cheat and Snake Oil Sakeman) was the Problem.
If you take a Close look at his Whole Career you will find that he was Always a Phony!!! The only thing he was actually good at was Selling Himself to the Press…. Fill in the Details Yourself and you will be amazed…