Watching a Chip Kelly practice is a window into the things that have made him a transformative college football coach: breathless tempo, exacting attention to detail, some wonkish eccentricity, simmering intensity, joy in the craft.
“This is our happy place,” Kelly says afterward on the UCLA practice field, an oasis of artificial turf tucked into the Westwood campus between fabled Pauley Pavilion, a hotel and a parking garage. Kelly is smiling and fidgeting, occasionally tucking his hands into his armpits as he talks, willing to entertain questions but ultimately much more interested in prepping for the biggest game of his UCLA tenure Saturday against Oregon. He is not a man prone to standing still.
That was reflected in Monday’s practice—or training, as Kelly prefers to call it, in line with military terminology. Between 9 and 10:26 a.m., there was maybe two minutes in which the Bruins could relax and exhale. Kelly used those two minutes to embrace his former punter from the 2019 team, Wade Lees, who was visiting from Australia with his wife and daughter. “We need to tighten up security around here,” Kelly cracked as a greeting to Lees, a flash of the coach’s sarcastic New England sense of humor.
Then it was back to work. One of the progenitors of the up-tempo, no-huddle offense has applied that concept to practice as a whole—cramming as many drills and reps as possible into the allotted workout window, drilling players to think quickly and execute when tired, never allowing enough downtime for minds to wander. “If you keep it moving, you don’t need that much time,” Kelly says. “We’re working with (shorter) attention spans, the TikTok generation. I’ve got ADD myself.”
The irony here is that Coach Hurry-up’s UCLA building job has been an exercise in methodical patience. To the surprise of many after Kelly was arguably the splashiest hire of the year in late 2017, his program makeover has unfolded at Iowa’s offensive pace. It took forever to get off the ground, with three straight losing seasons and a 10-21 record. More than a few people speculated that, as the rest of the sport acclimated to the pace of offense Kelly helped introduce at Oregon from 2007–12, he didn’t have a Plan B to succeed in the modern world.
Even year four was dicey into November—the Bruins were 5–4 before blowout victories over Colorado, USC and California probably saved Kelly’s job. Some thought keeping him was a mistake, even with an 8–4 record.
But that breakthrough was followed by an off-season of big decisions by key players, none more important than by quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson. Him opting to return for a fifth year instead of entering the NFL draft was part of a stick-it-out commitment from many UCLA veterans. Along with a few key additions via the transfer portal, Kelly finally had a team capable of validating the administrative faith in him.
The result to date is a 6–0 record and a No. 9 national ranking, the highest UCLA has been in the polls since September 2015. The Pac-12 preseason buzz was all about favorite Utah and the coaching/quarterback remodels at USC and Oregon. But it’s the Bruins who have quietly become the last unbeaten standing in the conference.
In a sport where loyalties are increasingly fleeting—from all sides of the equation, administrators and coaches and players—UCLA has gotten here in throwback fashion. Everyone hung together. Now we’ll find out how far a smart, veteran group can go together.
