Braun's vision, the people and a new challenge made Chip Kelly take the Northwestern OC job
Reporting by Matt Shelton
EVANSTON-The No. 1 question for new Northwestern offensive coordinator Chip Kelly is a simple one. Why.
Why did this coaching giant take a job at little ol’ Northwestern? This is a man who has been coaching for 35 years. Who was a head coach for two NFL teams. Who took Oregon to the national championship game as the head man in 2012. Who was the offensive coordinator for Ohio State when they won the national title in 2024. Who had the same role for the Las Vegas Raiders just a few months ago.
Kelly taking the OC job at Northwestern is like Brad Pitt taking a supporting role in a low-budget indie. (And, while no one will ever mistake Kelly for Pitt, or vise versa, they are ironically both 62 years old, born less than a month apart in 1963.)
Kelly was asked the why question, in so many words, at his introductory press conference at the Walter Athletics Center on Wednesday afternoon.
He admitted that he didn’t really have any connections to the NU program in his long career. He didn’t know athletic director Mark Jackson. He didn’t really know head coach David Braun, either, but admired the way the Wildcats played defense against his high-powered offense in Ohio State’s 31-7 win at Wrigley Field in 2024.
But he said on Wednesday that it was Braun’s vision for the program that sold Kelly on the job, as well as the chance to work with the quality student-athletes and people within the Northwestern program. Plus, it’s a good, old-fashioned challenge for him to start anew with an up-and-coming program.
“Just meeting [Braun], you know, and getting a chance to have real good conversations about what their vision was for this program, and kind of where they see it headed,” said Kelly when asked about the reasons he took the job. “And that intrigued me, you know, that was it.
“And then, I also know the type of student-athlete that you get to [coach here]. Kids are really serious about everything that they do if they decide to choose to come to Northwestern, whether it’s academically or athletically. And I think that was something that I was intrigued with.
“And so, as I looked through everything, this was a situation that you got excited about. You’re excited about moving into a new stadium, excited about an up-and-coming team.
“And I think the landscape of college football has changed, as everybody knows, so it’s a chance to start with a really good program, with really good people, and that’s what it was about. I wanted to be around really good people. And everything that I’ve experienced since I’ve been there has kind of really made me feel that that was the right decision, because there are really, really good people here.”
Braun’s side of the equation
So that’s the answer from Kelly’s perspective. But what about Braun? How did he know Kelly was a fit for his program? Would he be too much glitz for Northwestern’s grit?
After all, this is a guy who has been to the mountaintop of college football, but has also had a mercurial career. He a head coaching job at UCLA in 2023 to take the Ohio State offensive coordinator job. Then he left Columbus after just one year to take the same job with the Raiders before getting fired after 11 games last season.
Braun, you’ll remember, threw down the gauntlet for his program last November. In the media room at Wrigley Field, after a 24-22 loss to Michigan, the emotional coach said that Northwestern was done being the lovable losers who are just happy to cover the spread. They were there to win Big Ten titles and vie for College Football Playoff berths, he said.
It was a wake-up call for the program. The hiring of Kelly was part of his response to his own challenge.
“Ultimately, great football players that want to reach their fullest potential. [They] want to play and work with great coaches and great people, and we have a lot of that here at Northwestern,” he said.
Braun knew he’s had a good defense at Northwestern. But he also knew that his offense had to be much better to compete in the Big Ten after finishing 96th in the nation in scoring. So he didn’t renew the contract of offensive coordinator Zach Lujan, a close friend of his, after just two years, and then went out and landed one of the biggest names and brightest minds in the game. It was a big-boy move.
He also hired an up-and-coming quarterbacks coach in Jerry Neuheisel, a new offensive line coach in Tim Drevno and a new tight ends coach in Bob Bicknell to overhaul his offense.
Braun, who has been a head coach for just three years and is still learning on the job, now has a valuable resource for his development on his staff in Kelly. You can bet Braun will certainly pick Kelly’s brain.
“Coach Kelly’s experience is expansive,” he said. “Whether it be running offense or play calling or as a head coach. You know, something that we haven’t mentioned, [I’m] so excited for Chip to be leading our offense, but I’m also excited about all the conversations Chip and I are having about program development….
“I’d be silly to sit up here and pretend like I have it all figured out. As a head coach, you’re trying to surround yourself with the best and the brightest, and I know I have someone sitting to my left that has done it an extremely high level in terms of coordinating offense, but also as a head coach, and that’s something that I know I’m growing in that area, because he’s in the building with me. We’re growing together.”
You can be certain that Braun is leveraging the addition of Kelly, Neuheisel and the rest of his offensive staff when he talks to recruits, too.
“It was very evident with the hiring of coach Kelly and other staff that came on board that now, we have an opportunity to have conversations with young men that want to reach their fullest potential as a football player, and they want to work with the best and the brightest, great people in the coaching space, and also young men and that value this experience at Northwestern,” he said. “They value this education. They value our values, pretty powerful message to portray a young man and his family that are making a decision on whether or not they want to play at Northwestern.
“I would argue we’ve got the best offensive staff in all of college football.”
Evaluating Northwestern’s personnel
It’s telling that Kelly’s introductory press conference came more than a month after he was hired in late December. He’s been a busy man, crisscrossing the country to recruit both transfers and, later high school players.
The transfer portal window opened on Jan. 2, just a few days after Kelly was hired, and ran through Jan. 16. The Wildcats wound up landing grad transfer quarterback Aidan Chiles from Michigan State from the portal, a player who should be a good fit for Kelly’s scheme. They also got two running backs, two tight ends and three offensive linemen.
After that two-week period, Kelly popped up frequently on social media, visiting prospects from coast-to-coast, including a pair of 2027 quarterbacks in Northwestern’s backyard in Israel Abrams and Jake Nawrot. Last weekend, he was at Welsh-Ryan Arena for the Northwestern-Washington basketball game, hosting more visiting 2027 and 2028 high school prospects.
After focusing so much on recruiting, Kelly now gets to roll his sleeves up and evaluate the players in his program.
“The biggest thing right now is just getting to know the players and figuring out what they do,” said Kelly. “Well, what are their strengths, what are their weaknesses, and how do we actually want the strengths and kind of protect the weaknesses?
“So really getting to know the players that are in the on the team right now and then, how do we want to build it around them? We’ve got a lot of versatility on our coaching staff. We’ve been in a lot of different systems, but the system will always be personnel-driven. So once we get a real good feel for what our players can do and what position our job is to put them in positions to make plays.”
One player that Kelly already likes is running back Caleb Komolafe, who ran for more than 900 yards in his first crack as the No. 1 back in 2025.
“The first word that comes to mind is tough,” said Kelly. “I mean, he is a tough [player]. He runs behind his pads and, being around him, not only is he physically tough, but you can tell he’s mentally tough. That’s a quality that I’m not sure can be coached. That’s what kind of jumps off the tape.
“I remember watching Northwestern playing against Penn State, and, you know, can they finish the drive and just run some time off the clock? And he ran the last touchdown in. And I was like, ‘That’s a tough dude right there.'”
He continued, “I think you can build around that because I think he has the ability to be both an inside and an outside runner because of his athletic ability.”
Fitting the scheme to personnel
Kelly’s offenses over the years have had a lot of similarities. They featured a mobile quarterback. They ran a lot of two-tight end sets. They ran a lot of read-option.
But he has also adapted it over the years. At Oregon, he had dynamic, dual-threat quarterbacks, like Dennis Dixon, to build around. At Ohio State two years ago, he had Will Howard, more of a pro-style quarterback, and two outstanding running backs in TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins, who split carries evenly.
Kelly says that his system at Northwestern will be dependent on the personnel he is in the midst of evaluating.
“I mean, you always have to change,” he said. “I think everything every year is slightly different. It should always be built around the personnel.
“You can say we’re going to throw the ball every down, but if you don’t have anybody that’s really good at catching it, or anybody really good at throwing it, then probably shouldn’t be doing that, you know. So I think it’s really evaluating what your personality is and putting them in the right position where they have an opportunity to make plays.
“And I think that’s where the evolution comes. And I also think you also have to know what you’re facing. So do you have a plan to handle this? You know, you’re seeing, there’s a lot of different defenses that people are playing nowadays, and there’s a trickle down effect, I think, from the NFL. A lot more two-high [safety] defenses, where you think you can run the ball, but then the fits are taking away the run game. So how do you exploit that?”
That’s the fun part for Kelly, who is an Xs-and-Os guy at heart.
“There’s a lot more disguise going on now [on defense]. There’s a lot more people playing a lot of a wide variety of coverages, not just two. So you got to be able to handle things. …. Defenses, middle-open defenses, zero blitzes, quarters [coverage], because they do it all. So I think you have to adjust from that standpoint.”
“I think that’s what that’s the fun part of the game, you know, if you’re kind of an X-and-O guy and that stuff, it’s those things and those challenges are the ones that really get you excited. And I think in this league, and…how good everybody is, I think from the coaching standpoint, you get to look at some of these defenses in this league. They’re they’re outstanding, and you get excited about that if you’re a competitor, that you get to go against those defenses.”
The takeaway is that Kelly’s offense this season at Northwestern might look much different than it has in the past. And it will be in a constant state of flux as the year goes on.
“So I think you have to constantly change, not only over time from a year-to-year, but even sometimes week-to-week, because of what you’re going to face and how your players’ strengths and weaknesses match up against your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.”
