Since Chip Kelly was fired by the Raiders nine days ago, there has been a wave of reports and rumors about what went wrong while he was in the building.
A few stories have painted Kelly as borderline incompetent, and an NFL Network report last week acknowledged there were hiccups, but said Kelly was essentially forced to run Pete Carroll’s offense for the first 11 weeks of the season.
“Based on the views of those who studied the offense and based on those who game-planned against it this season, they don’t believe Kelly was running his own offense at all. It was unlike anything Kelly previously had run,” Rapoport reported on Saturday.
“In fact, defensive coordinators likened the Raiders offense this season more to Shane Waldron’s offense with the Seahawks in 2023, Carroll’s last year with Seattle,” Rapoport continued. “Kelly’s trademark creative runs out of shotgun had been dramatically limited. Instead, the blend of Seattle and Las Vegas schemes tilted far more toward the under-center zone scheme Carroll favors.”
“One previous opponent even had their scout team prepare cards based on Seattle plays of the past under Carroll, sources say.”
But according to Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter, he was told by someone close to the situation that Kelly was in full control of the Raiders’ offense.
“Any type of reporting that Pete meddled or did anything to sabotage [the offense], I’m not calling the reporter out, but I’m calling out whoever the source is,” Carpenter said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.
“I was directly involved and I’m not basing this on anything Pete Carroll has ever said to me. I’m not going to tell you who told me because that’s not how this works. When someone talks to you off the record and gives you information, you protect that identity… my only rule with any source is if it’s determined that you lied to me, I will expose you as my source,” Carpenter continued.
“The person who told me definitively that Chip ran the offense has never come out and publicly denied that, so unless I find out they have, I won’t name the person. But I can tell you definitively this was Chip’s offense. I have a sneaking suspicion who is behind those rumors [that Kelly was running Carroll’s offense], and I bet if I gave you a guess, you would not be able to guess who I think it is.”
Reading into Carpenter’s comments a little, he was clear that it was not Carroll who told him Kelly had autonomy over the offense.
But he did not say it wasn’t Kelly.
Applying a little logic to the situation, who else in the building would care if they were exposed for saying Kelly had control of the offense?
No one comes to mind other than Kelly.
And one other detail to remember. There was a report week 2 that Tom Brady was working closely with Kelly to create gameplans.
The only reason it’s hard to believe Brady would be in any way responsible for the Raiders’ offense is that he surely would have suggested better ideas than what the Raiders were rolling out in the first 11 weeks of the season.
Oh, he will burn a source who lied to him? So who was it who told him there was no concern about Christian Wilkins inside the building in the leadup to preseason? That was clearly a lie, so who said it? He made it seem like he had multiple sources in fact, so why no names?
This is nonsense. If he’s ever burned a source, I’ve never seen it. If he really does have that policy, I suspect the source(s) might be so inconsequential that he’s too embarrassed to admit who it was.
Shut up Hondo! You don’t have a clue what is going on except for whatever janitor gives you info. You aren’t credible at all. The only person this deflects the negative attention from is Pete. Brady had been blabbing about all he was doing earlier in the season and I’m betting he continued doing so because Chip was frustrated using Pete’s old school offense. Pete wanted to get great stats for Geno since it’s the one kid on the Raiders he’s actually proud of. The problem is Geno has never and will never be a good QB. Disaster from day 1. Way to go Mark so glad you didn’t go all in on Ben Johnson. WE DESERVE BETTER!!!!
Hondo is a Shill