When Chip Kelly became the coach of the Eagles, he kept longtime assistant Ted Williams, who has been on the staff since 1995, as the tight ends coach. And Williams says he has been learning a whole lot about Oregon’s offense under Kelly in the last few years, because that’s the offense we’re going to see in Philadelphia this season.
“It’ll be very, very similar to what you saw at Oregon,” Williams told PhillyMag.com. “He needs to be comfortable with what he’s saying to the offense and how he’s communicating it. So you don’t just out of the box decide that you’re going to do something a certain way and you don’t feel comfortable with it. So it’s going to look like Oregon.”
If Michael Vick is the starting quarterback, that makes a lot of sense. Vick’s skills are perfectly suited to the kind of offense that Kelly has run at Oregon, where last year starting quarterback Marcus Mariota passed for 2,677 yards and ran for 752 yards. (In Vick’s 10 NFL seasons he has averaged 2,027 yards passing and 555 yards rushing.) But what if Nick Foles is the starter?
In that case, Kelly says, he’s going to have to make some adjustments.
“If I called 20 read option plays with Nick Foles in the game, I should be fired,” Kelly said, via Geoff Mosher of CSNPhilly.com.
So the Eagles’ offense won’t look much like Oregon’s if Foles is starting.