We noted recently that people close to Oregon coach Chip Kelly think he wants to go to the NFL. Among NFL teams, the feeling is mutual.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, multiple NFL teams are already checking into Kelly and considering how they could lure him after the season.
At the moment, of course, no NFL teams have job openings available, but suffice to say there are some owners who expect to fire their head coaches when the season ends, and those owners want to be ready to move on Kelly quickly when the time comes.
Kelly’s goal right now is to win the national championship at Oregon, and his Ducks are undefeated and seemingly heading toward the BCS title game. But people in both the NFL world and the college football world seem to think that if Oregon is in that game, that game will be Kelly’s last at the college level. He wants to see if his style can work in the NFL, and NFL owners are eager to give him the opportunity.
Everything about Kelly -- from the spread offense he runs to the high-risk playcalling he enjoys to the way he has built a program through recruiting great athletes who are perfect fits in his system -- suggests that he’s perfectly suited for college football. But if Kelly wants to see how his methods work at the next level, and if there are NFL owners who want to see what Kelly can bring to the table, it’s apparently only a matter of time before Kelly is an NFL coach.
And that time may be two months from now.