The beauty of the autumn afternoon and the blissful nostalgia of Oregon’s homecoming weekend were lost on UCLA coach Chip Kelly. He was stonefaced as he paced the sidelines of Autzen Stadium, that madhouse of green and yellow and raucous noise, and his return on Saturday to the scene of his greatest football coaching success was no happy homecoming.
At Oregon, Kelly had the famous blur offense. At UCLA, he has a blurry offense: It’s indistinct, inconsistent, operates in fits and starts, and too often gets derailed by dropped passes and sloppy, needless penalties.
At Oregon, where he led the Ducks to four BCS bowl games — including the national championship contest in January 2011 — he lost only seven games in four seasons.