The Raiders were supposed to be getting a major upgrade at offensive coordinator when Chip Kelly was hired in February, but the Kelly era in Las Vegas never even made it to the second chapter.
Only the Tennessee Titans scored few points per game than the Raiders through the first 12 weeks of the season and Kelly was fired after a 10-point effort against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday.
From a distance, Kelly’s offense looked awful. From inside the building, it was apparently worse.
According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, Kelly was borderline incompetent at times.
“There were times I was told where Chip Kelly was repeatedly botching the play calls,” Pelissero said on the Rich Eisen Show on Wednesday.
“Where he’s supposed to be, for instance, tagging a motion on a play, so the receiver is on the left, not the right. He forgets to say it, so Geno Smith is going to the line of scrimmage and going, ‘This doesn’t look right” and they’re trying to run a play. It happened on a third down in the game the other day.”
“There was 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,” Pelissero continued. “Things like that happen. You’re not productive. That’s enough. You didn’t need any extra excuses. There were a lot of things that were popping up within games that were just not anything that a good team can overcome. They didn’t have enough talent.”
Over the years, the Raiders have dealt their fair share of difficult situations involving players and coaches.
The Kelly situation, though, might be unprecedented.
Geno Smith has taken a lot of criticism in recent weeks, but the fact that he never publicly threw Kelly under the bus is an impressive achievement on the part of the veteran quarterback.
Smith might not be great at handling rowdy fans on game day, but he deserves an award if Pelissero’s story is accurate.
Interestingly, the one person Kelly has mentioned since being fired was Smith.
In a statement to FOX insider Jay Glazer, Smith was the only member of the Raiders organization that Kelly acknowledged by name.
“I am grateful for the opportunity with the Raiders, bottom line in this league you have to win,” Kelly told Glazer, who posted the message on X.
“I really loved those players, I’m a huge, HUGE Geno Smith fan, that was one of the best parts of this experience for me, working with Geno and those guys every day. But hey, we gotta win. I get it.”
x: @raidersbeat
For all the Chip homers and scapegoat believers, if you know anything about football all of these things coming to light start to fit into place. Unless you don’t know what you see on the field and choose to jam square pegs in round holes.
The Masque-Raiders!!!