Huskies Will Face UCLA's Kelly, Not Chip Off the Old Block

In 2009, this Pac-10 school boldly hired itself a new football coach, and not just any coach.

It handed the keys of the program to an offensive coordinator known for his playbook genius, yet someone with no head-coaching experience whatsoever at any level of the game. 

Oregon chose Chip Kelly.

Simultaneously, Washington picked Steve Sarkisian.

Same credentials, campuses 280 miles apart, each expected to put up the points.

For a moment, someone had the audacity to consider the potential shoot-outs that might emerge with these two masterminds opening up their playbooks and getting after each other. 

Ah, but a stark Sark reality set in. 

The Ducks were basking in success when they promoted Kelly after he had served as their new-age offensive coordinator for two seasons. However, the UW was merely attempting to climb out of the dumpster when it brought in its new guy from USC. 

For the next four years, Kelly's teams absolutely pounded on Sarkisian's Huskies every chance they could, beating them by 24, 37, 17 and 31 points — an average 27.5-point margin — before the Ducks leader took his extensive football acumen and headed for the NFL.

In 132 seasons of UW football, only one other head coach has been harder on the Huskies over a 48-month span. 

From 2003 to '06 of his 11-year stay in Berkeley, California's Jeff Tedford directed the Bears to victories of 47, 30, 39 and 7 points over the local ball team, winning by a whopping 30.7 on the average. The coach inflicted this repetitive damage using teams built around two fairly talented players bound for NFL greatness, quarterback Aaron Rodgers and running back Marshawn Lynch.

Tedford later made amends by joining Chris Petersen's UW staff as an offensive consultant in 2016 and helping guide that milestone Husky team into the College Football Playoff against Alabama.

Kelly, however, returns to Husky Stadium on Saturday afternoon for the first time with UCLA (4-2 overall, 2-1 Pac-12) — and for the first time in 10 years — and he's not looking to do anyone any favors. Offer any apologizes. Certainly he won't go easy on Jimmy Lake, who nonetheless admires this man's coaching contribution to the game.

"I have a lot of respect for Chip," Lake said. "He changed football, and not just college football, with a lot of schemes."

The Huskies have beaten Kelly before, but just once, topping his first Bruins team 31-24 with a Petersen-coached club in 2018, and doing it at the Rose Bowl. The Pac-12 schedule rotation and the pandemic wiped out subsequent meetings for these schools. 

Kelly, 57, comes to Seattle after spending NFL coaching stints in Philadelphia and San Francisco and finding out, same as Nick Saban and now Urban Meyer, that maybe he was destined to be just a college coach all along.

The New Hampshire native still has the same football mindset who likes to overload one side of the field, hit you with a barrage of misdirection plays and wear everyone down with an up-tempo approach.

Media members never know what to expect from this quirky guy, who likes to cross them up, too.

Ted Miller, formerly an ESPN and a Seattle Post-Intelligencer college football writer, once described Kelly as being "funny, biting, pithy, strange, fiery and surprising when talking to reporters."