Assessing how Chip Kelly hire impacts Ohio State recruiting

When Chip Kelly made the decision to leave UCLA, where he was the head coach, to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State, it caught a lot of people’s attention. After all, it was an interesting move for both schools as well as Kelly himself.

One of the most interesting aspects of the move is the recruiting angle. During an appearance on Andy Staples On3, Lettermen Row‘s Spencer Holbrook broke down how the hire is going to impact recruiting at Ohio State.

“I don’t think Chip’s being brought in needing to recruit because Justin Frye is going to recruit the offensive line,” Holbrook said. “Each of the position coaches have their unit running pretty well on the recruiting trail, and the head coach is a quarterback coach who gets praised every time CJ Stroud steps up to the microphone. So, Chip doesn’t really have to do a lot of recruiting.”

Ultimately, the idea behind hiring Kelly has less to do with recruiting and more to do with his ability to scheme and draw up offensive plays.

“I think the best thing Chip Kelly can do on the recruiting trail is be in the building when recruits show up. ‘Hey, here’s Chip Kelly. He’s our offensive coordinator. Remember the neon green Oregon jerseys? Yeah, that was the coach.’ So, like it won’t be that hard to sell Chip Kelly on the recruiting trail to have guys come play for him. I really think that he can help them recruiting, but he’s not going to be asked to do the dirty work. I can’t say dirty work because that means so many different things to your audience.”

Holbrook even made the comparison to Bill O’Brien, who briefly was the Ohio State offensive coordinator before leaving to be the Boston College head coach. In many ways, they were set to have similar approaches to recruiting.

“Bill O’Brien you get on the phone with recruits and say, ‘Remember when I coached Tom Brady? Remember when I did this with Penn State and actually made a couple quarterbacks who weren’t any good look pretty good?’ That was the recruiting pitch with Bill O’Brien. Now, it’s with Chip Kelly I think he’s going to be able to recruit running backs better than quarterbacks. Ryan Day knows what he’s doing recruiting quarterbacks and Chip Kelly can just get on the phone and talk about the NFL guys that he’s coached and the college offenses that he put out there and the rushing attack that he was able to do.”

Ohio State had the third-ranked recruiting class in the 2024 cycle, according to the On3 Industry Rankings. For now, the Buckeyes already have the second-ranked class in the 2025 cycle as well.

“The recruiting aspect, we didn’t even really think about it when he first gets hired on Friday just because he’s gonna come call plays and the rest of the offensive staff is gonna keep doing their thing. It’s not as much a recruiting piece at all. I think it was smart of Ryan Day to look at his staff, see the lineup of recruiters that he has already, and say, we don’t really need a recruiter at the offensive coordinator position. We’ve got the recruiters that we want,” Holbrook said.

“Now, we’ve got to go find a ball coach who can just call plays and be a ball coach, and Chip Kelly wanted to do that. That’s exactly what he gets to do now.”