Chad Kelly thinks he could start for over 50 percent of NFL teams

If nothing else, quarterback Chad Kelly is doing well to keep his name in headlines following his Canadian Football League Grey Cup performance. 

As TSN's Dave Naylor noted, Kelly came off the bench to help the Toronto Argonauts defeat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the CFL title game this past Sunday. The final pick of the 2017 NFL Draft then boldly claimed on the "Pardon My Take" podcast that he could start over roughly 50% of the QB1s currently featuring for teams at the sport's highest level on fall Sundays. 

"This is what I think," Kelly explained, as shared by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. "Obviously there’s a lot of off-the-field stuff, right? We all know about it. It’s all been publicized. You know, you stick a camera in a kid’s face at eight years old and give him his own day, you know, that’s predominately what’s going to happen, is that the light is going to shine a little brighter when it’s good or bad, right? But I think people have mistaken my on-the-field capabilities of thinking clearly, right? Because they see that I do some dumb things off the field. 

"So I think that with my saying 50 percent, I feel like I know the game a lot more than a lot of people because I started at such a young age, and that’s all I knew. In order to, you know, make it in life, I thought it was just to play in the NFL, really not even play in college. It was to play for the Buffalo Bills or someone, you know? That was the main focus my whole life."

Kelly is the nephew of Hall of Fame quarterback and Bills legend Jim Kelly. The 28-year-old recorded only one career run for minus-one yards in NFL regular-season action before he had to relocate up North to continue playing professionally. 

Per The Associated Press (h/t ESPN), Chad Kelly pleaded guilty to misdemeanor second-degree criminal trespassing in March 2019 for entering a home uninvited after he attended a Halloween party hosted by then-Denver Broncos pass-rusher Von Miller the previous October. Denver released Kelly after his arrest.

Kelly later found a temporary home with the Indianapolis Colts and spent time on their active roster and practice squad. He never took a meaningful snap with the Colts before he was released in September 2020. 

It's unknown if any quarterback-needy NFL team would take a flier on Kelly this fall or winter.