Gameday Notes: Widener Coach Unhappy With Kelly

Widener head coach Mike Kelly is apparently not happy with Chip Kelly.

Widener fell to Linfield College (Oregon) Saturday, 45-7. So what does Chip Kelly have to do with that? According to the Inquirer, he allowed Linfield to practice at the Eagles’ facility leading up to the game.

“Make sure you put in the paper that we thank Chip Kelly and I hope the Seahawks do well tomorrow,” Mike Kelly told the Inquirer. “He was helping them out. Maybe somebody in Philadelphia ought to buy him a map so he knows where he lives now. But, go Seahawks.”

It sounds like these two won’t be meeting for brunch any time soon.

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Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports writes about how Oregon coach Mark Helfrich has stepped out of Kelly’s shadow at Oregon:

“He’s proven himself as a head coach,” Phil Knight, the Nike founder and Oregon super booster, said later as the Ducks were presented the league title and yellow and green confetti fell. “Not just as a coach, but a great head coach. He’s a very, very bright man. He learned a lot from Chip Kelly, but he was also a part of the Chip Kelly era. He contributed his fair share.”

“I’ve wanted to win this year for a lot of reasons,” offensive coordinator Scott Frost said. “But I wanted to win so bad for Mark Helfrich. People were going to be quick to judge Mark no matter what happened because of the success Chip had. Maybe people will finally realize what a great coach they do have coaching here at Oregon.”

Oregon is expected to be one of the four teams in the playoff for the national championship when the official announcement is made later today.

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A note on last week’s Thanksgiving Day game:

With 32 million viewers, FOX’s Eagles-Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game is the most-watched show of the fall TV season. #NFL

— Greg Aiello (@gregaiello) December 5, 2014

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Pete Prisco of CBSSports.com likes what he’s seeing out of Chip Kelly:

When Chip Kelly was said to be leaving Oregon for the NFL, I sent out a tweet saying he was a college coach. That irked many, and it still lives on with some in the Twitter-verse. What those people didn’t see was that after a detailed look at Kelly, I changed my mind long before he coached his first NFL game.

Chip Kelly is a smart, talented football coach.

What’s even better: He doesn’t give a crap about what you, me or any of the traditional football coaches think about what he’s doing, his innovative ways to coaching on the professional level.

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Washington could end up picking Robert Griffin III over Jay Gruden, writes Jason Reid of The Washington Post:

If it were up to Gruden, the Redskins would make a clean break in the offseason, taking whatever they could get for Griffin in a trade. But despite Griffin’s awful performance — he hasn’t won a game in more than a year while being benched in successive seasons — the situation may not be so clear-cut for Snyder and Allen, who had key roles in the decision to trade four high-round draft picks for the opportunity to select Griffin.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Snyder and Allen were tempted to give Griffin another shot at reclaiming the starting job. Or they could take a hard-line approach in trade talks, hoping to recoup a portion of the king’s ransom it took to get Griffin. In either scenario, the Redskins would wind up as losers.