QUICK CHANGE: When Chip Kelly brings to the Eagles his fast-paced no-huddle attack, which at Oregon included a player on the sidelines holding up cards to signal play calls, it will present a unique challenge for the Giants. (Getty Images)
QUICK CHANGE: When Chip Kelly brings to the Eagles his fast-paced no-huddle attack, which at Oregon included a player on the sidelines holding up cards to signal play calls, it will present a unique challenge for the Giants. (
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It is the fourth quarter and Jason Pierre-Paul and Justin Tuck are bent over, hands on knees, tongues hanging out, gasping for oxygen.
During a timeout coach Tom Coughlin is forced to burn, Giants defensive players discuss the appropriate time to fake an injury when play resumes.
Chip’s Ahere. Chip Kelly.
He comes from Oregon, and everybody better duck.
Of course, there never are any guarantees when the latest college genius decides to reverse field and turn his back on promises made to trusting recruits and make the Lambeau Leap, financial and otherwise, to the NFL. There is no better examples than Nick Saban. Or Bobby Petrino. Or John Calipari in basketball.
There are NFL skeptics who view Kelly as a gimmick coach making a money grab who will be a fish out of water. But the Eagles are convinced Kelly is much more Jimmy Johnson than Steve Spurrier, more Jim Harbaugh than Lou Holtz, more their modern-day Dick Vermeil than a guy who belongs in the college game like a Mike Krzyzewski or Bobby Knight or Jim Boeheim or Bobby Bowden.
If they’re right, and if Robert Griffin III can make it most of the way back from his knee surgery, then the 2013 Giants suddenly confront clear and present dangers to their south.
Because of the nature of the city, because he never has coached in the NFL, because we don’t know whether he has the skin of an armadillo, because he won’t have a talent edge on his opposition, because he doesn’t have a Colin Kaepernick, because the manic, no-huddle spread offense exposes the quarterback to risk, Kelly is a boom-or-bust hire.
“I look for a quarterback who can run and not a running quarterback who can throw,” Kelly was quoted as saying two months ago. “I want a quarterback who can beat you with his arm. We are not a Tim Tebow-type of quarterback team. I am not going to run my quarterback 20 times on power runs.”
We can be fairly certain of this much: Kelly — a feisty, irreverent, smart aleck, 49-year-old bachelor married only to the game of football — will get after this job the way Pete Rose hustled to first base.
His is a beautiful mind, his offensive concepts so innovative that the likes of Bill Belichick and Jon Gruden have picked his brain, and vice versa. Tom Brady is that much more of a threat these days with elements of the fastbreak offense Kelly will thrust on the NFL.
Now Kelly won’t have Brady, and he likely won’t want to pay Michael Vick $16 million, and there is no way you can turn a pro team into Loyola Marymount unless you field an entire unit of rookies and first-year players with fresh legs who can run all day. He won’t have all the horses he needs right away, but he will have those horses ready to run like Secretariat at a moment’s notice. It will mean more sleepless nights for Perry Fewell and defensive coordinators everywhere.
Remember how Andy Reid opened a game against the Cowboys in 2000 with an onside kick? Kelly’s nickname is Big Balls Chip.
“I don’t think anything can stop [Kelly’s] offense,” 49ers rookie LaMichael James, a former Duck, told CSNPhilly.com. “I think he can be one of the best coaches in the NFL.”
The Eagles — willing to outbid Oregon, backed by Phil Knight and Nike — clearly agree.
“Pistol, don’t know that very well,” Kelly said once. “We’re more of a spread run team. Trends go one way and the other. I said this a long time ago: If you weren’t in the room with Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne when they invented this game, you stole it from somebody else. Any coach is going to learn from other people and see how they implement it in their system. Anything you do has to be personnel driven. You have to adapt to the personnel you have.”
Kelly once had Paul Westhead, former coach of Loyola Marymount and the 1980 champion Lakers, speak to his team in preseason.
“Anyone can run the fastbreak for 10 or 15 possessions,” Westhead was quoted as saying. “It’s when you do it 70 to 80 times a game … that’s how you crack the opposition.”
Kelly goes for it so fearlessly on fourth down he makes Sean Payton look like Woody Hayes. And beware the fake punt and two-point conversion.
“I think you’ll see his passing game expand and become more productive in terms of throwing the ball,” said Mike Lombardi of the NFL Network. “I do think he’ll adjust, and I do think he’ll be able to find his rhythm in the NFL.”
A Chip on the Giants’ shoulder. But will he be innovative enough to keep up with Rex Ryan’s attack offense?
steve.serby@nypost.com