49ers Fire Kelly, Where Does He Land Next?

As everyone knows by now, the San Francisco 49ers made it official after their game vs the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday that the team has fired head coach Chip Kelly after his first season with the team. The team also fired General Manager Trent Baalke. 

In his first season with the team, Kelly led the 49ers to a record of 2-14, finishing the season in dead last in the NFC West. This season has been nothing but a disaster for Kelly and company, as it started in the preseason, and it carried into the regular season. 

Many were expecting the 49ers to make some noise in the NFC West, but they were all wrong, as the team did not meet any of their original expectations.

Before coming to San Francisco, Kelly spent three seasons as the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, where he led the team to a 10-6 record for his first two seasons with the team, helping them make the playoffs once during his time with the franchise.

It did not go downhill for Kelly and the team until the 2015 season, when the team named him head of football operations, allowing him to make trades and roster moves. 

Kelly lost players like LeSean McCoy, DeSean Jackson, Jeremy Maclin, and Nick Foles. In return, Kelly brought in players like Sam Bradford, DeMarco Murray, and Kiko Alonso.

After Kelly made all of those moves, the team did not play as well as everyone thought they would, as they ended up finishing 6-9 before firing him during the final week of the season, replacing him with Doug Pederson.  

On the team side of things, San Francisco wanted to start over from the Chip Kelly experiment after just one season, which many could see why they would want to do that. The franchise needs to go through a culture change and keeping Kelly was not in the books for them.

On the Kelly side of things, this was an embarrassing season for him, and after having a season like that and all that happened in his last year with the Eagles, it will be tough to see him getting an interview for any of the head coaching vacancies around the league.

One of the main reasons why it did not work well in Philadelphia and San Fransisco is due to Kelly wanting to use a college-orientated offense, it is obvious that it did not work for either team.

When it did not work, he did not do anything to fix the problem, he just kept using basically the same plays. It was well known that Kelly’s offense worked well in the NCAA, but it did not work well in the NFL.

It will not take long for Kelly to find a job, and the smart thing for Kelly to do is go back to college football and become a college football head coach, since he is a shown to be a successful one at that level. There are multiple schools that would love someone like him as their teams head coach. Look at a team at Notre Dame, who fired their head coach after finishing 4-8, as a landing spot for Kelly.

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