Chip Kelly is a fraud.
The Oregon coach leads a team into battle on a weekly basis carrying nothing but a gimmick offense and weak line of defense in his arsenal.
Sure, Kelly is 22-5 overall since taking over the reins from Mike Bellotti in 2009, but all five of his losses have come when teams have had more than one week to prepare for his offense.
The Ducks pride themselves on an up-tempo offense that wears down defenses by giving them little time to substitute players. But when teams can spend numerous days and weeks on their offense — Kelly is 1-4 in season openers and bowl games — the Ducks become all quack and no bite.
Oregon averaged 49.3 points per game last season. But in Kelly’s four combined season opener and bowl game losses, his dynamic offense managed a measly 17.8 points per game.
On the other end of the spectrum is LSU coach Les Miles.
Miles, who dominated Kelly in both personnel and scheming decisions during Saturday’s 40-27 trouncing, is a whopping 12-1 in season openers and bowl games.
When a Miles-coached team has time to prepare, it always comes out ready to play. In their 13 season openers and bowl games during the Miles era, the Tigers have scored 482 points, 37.1 per game, while surrendering just 208 points, 16 per contest.
The difference Saturday was not a difference of schemes clashing, but a difference of preparation tactics.
While Kelly was busy trying to cram more offensive plays into practice time, Miles was worried about fine-tuning the plays he already had.
Oregon ran 12 more plays than LSU, yet LSU won the time of possession battle by more than six minutes.
To defend the Ducks, flash and pomp win in the Pacific-12. Even the smallest trick or shiny object will distract a defense, allowing the offense to march down the field for a score.
But when Oregon tries to make that transition to the big leagues, a lack of fundamentals become its downfall.
The Ducks have played major conference teams in bowl games and season openers three times under Kelly — LSU on Saturday, Auburn in the 2011 BCS Championship Game and Ohio State in the 2010 Rose Bowl. All three times they have lost, and in all three games they lost the time of possession battle and had more penalties than their opponents.
Though all the games Kelly has lost have not been blowouts, the fact of the matter remains that winning is all that counts.
And when all the chips are on the table, no pun intended, Kelly isn’t winning.
Now, there is no denying Kelly has a great shot to go on and win his third PAC 10/12 title in as many seasons as head man in Eugene, but he’ll still face an uphill battle in bringing home the big prize.
Great teams with great coaches will know how to stop this current offense fad. The spread is a sexy offense now, just as the Pistol formation was four years ago. People were enamored with the Pistol then, but its mystery was solved. Now it’s almost extinct.
Get-rich-quick schemes rarely work in real life. To expect them to be a stable bet in college football is equally foolish. The spread attack will be, and has been by numerous teams, figured out, and it will soon become a thing of the past.
Kelly has yet to show the ability to adapt when his opponents catch on to his scheme. He lives and dies by the spread.
In a few years, if Kelly continues down his stubborn path of riding a flash in the pan offense, paying him an average $3.42 million a year through 2015 will be more criminal than all the cab drivers I encountered in Dallas this weekend. And those drivers are nothing more than licensed thieves.
 
Rob Landry is a 23-year old mass communication senior from Mandeville. Follow him on Twitter @RobLandry85.
 
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Contact Rob Landry at [email protected]