Imagine Bill Belichick going to a team with a meddlesome owner. Try picturing a team asking Pete Carroll or Mike Tomlin to tone it down a bit. Bruce Arians not being allowed to run his own ship. Sean Payton asked to give up play calling. You get the idea.
We don't yet know if Chip Kelly is a good NFL head coach, and we certainly are fair to question if the San Francisco 49ers are a good job opening. But for argument's sake, let's assume they both are.
This would be a terrible match.
The reports that Kelly has interest in the 49ers and that the 49ers have interest in him won't be stunning to many, but they should be. Step back and think about what has transpired the past three years and ask yourself ... why would either side want this?
Yes, there are only 32 head-coaching gigs in the world (Kelly can only dream of 31 of them now), and there seven open right now. I get why an out-of-work coach who is experiencing a "soft market" would want to look at all jobs that show interest. And it makes sense that a team in dire need of some buzz and excitement might want to consider a coach who, not that long ago, was given the vaunted "genius" tag.
But did none of us learn anything from the Jim Harbaugh saga? What once was a great marriage turned sour when he and his quirky ways started to grate on owner Jed York and GM Trent Baalke. So they froze each other out. For a while, it worked with the team winning games. But ultimately it reached critical mass, creating one of the more strained work environments for a still-talented team. The 49ers' 8-8 mark in 2014 represented what happens when a talented team is victim to a coach and front office at loggerheads.
It's hard not to see the similarities between Harbaugh and Kelly — not in terms of style but rather temperament. Both are ISTP-personality, solo-flier types who just want to be left alone. You think Kelly wants to be messed with in his next job the way he was in Philly? Again, this is not a indictment on the Eagles, one of the more stable and successful franchises since the millennium. It was a style conflict, with the hands-on Jeffrey Lurie and the hands-ier Howie Roseman a tricky match from the start, even when they were winning a good amount of games.
Where you could have common ground between Kelly and the 49ers is with Colin Kaepernick. If the franchise is fully committed to rebuilding this quarterback, and sticking with him, then it might be wise to consider Kelly's personal touch as the way to do it. That might make sense. But everything the 49ers have said and done from the time they started backing away from Kaepernick this season suggests that they are not completely on board with this track.
And if you want Kelly, you're going to have to pay him. In other words, Jim Tomsula bucks won't work. Yeah, it sounds insane that the team is stuck giving their one-year coach a $14 million gold watch on his way out of town — good for him! — but it's also worth noting that he was paid as the third-lowest head coach on an annual basis, which is what everyone's Yorkian expectations were last year when they let Harbaugh walk, let Adam Gase get out of the building and promoted a lunch-pail career D-line coach as their new ship captain.
Kelly, uh, is in a different tax bracket, even after his Philly flameout. The reason he failed there was over personnel, as much as anything, but there are some who feel he still will want final say — or something close to it — in his next job. Is Baalke or York ready to cede that? Not likely.
This is what coaching interviews are for. There might be high interest in both parties on the way in but far less so after chatting over lobster bisque. And we'll see what the temperature is with Kelly and the 49ers in a day or two, when it should become obvious which direction each is headed. The 49ers seem to have a wildly varied list of potential candidates, and Kelly still could garner interest elsewhere with a few teams that have yet to settle on new general managers.
We'll be fascinated to see what both sides, Kelly and the 49ers, end up doing. We just don't think they'll pair up very well.
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