We are looking for a modern version of Bill Walsh and his legacy.

Originally posted by GolittaCamper:
No, Trent Balkie is a Bill Parcels guy, so we are looking for the exact opposite of a Bill Walsh guy.

Originally posted by GolittaCamper:
No, Trent Balkie is a Bill Parcels guy, so we are looking for the exact opposite of a Bill Walsh guy.

"I think the creative and innovative coaches are the ones who are introspective; ones who like to develop their ideas; ones who take a look at all the equations and want to find the right answers."--Bill F'ing Walsh.

For more than a decade, he shared a dingy office in the basement with another coach; the whiteboard behind his desk where he diagrammed plays remains. Then, a decade ago, Chip took his ideas west, to Oregon, and quickly transformed a so-so college program into a national power.

A nobody. A guy who wasn't even the head coach in Durham is now shifting the landscape of pro football as well, in just his third season coaching the Eagles.

On first blush, he's like some genius kid who starts tinkering with electronics in a garage when he's still in junior high and suddenly pops up a dozen years later as the head of a huge computer company. But no — computer geeks toil virgin ground, open to the innovative. Football is the opposite. Football has rules and traditions and the way things have always been done and the way they must continue to be done. In football, you pay your dues and build on the past.

Chip Kelly rejects all that. "This is the way we've always done it" — he has formally jettisoned that sentiment from his coaches' brains.

It's clear, for example, that Chip Kelly doesn't give a rat's ass what other people think of him. Which some people find quite discombobulating. An NFL insider who spent hours with Kelly over dinner a few years ago describes a surreal divide: Chip has a brilliant football mind and can talk endlessly about the game — at warp speed, the way he always talks — but doesn't seem to be there with you in the moments that aren't about football. He won't make eye contact. He seems to be daydreaming, and you sit there wondering what he's really thinking. Usually, of course, getting to know someone is a combination of what he's saying and how he feels to you, his body language, the little interjected moments of, say, "How's your steak?" Chip seems devoid of those moments. He shares almost nothing of himself. He doesn't ask questions. He doesn't seem normal, says the NFL guy, who was left, after spending several hours with Kelly, with the most basic fear:

Doesn't Chip like me?

"I think he leads most of his life thinking solely about the game. And he doesn't suffer fools." I ask Scarano if he likes Chip. "Oh, yeah. Chip is Chip, look at it that way. All coaches are alphas. Chip is double alpha. He's not going to crack wise, not make small talk all the time. But in moments when he's relaxed, he's a fun guy to be with. He doesn't show it to everybody."