Ian Allan answers ALL of your fantasy football questions. In this edition: How will Chip Kelly fit in San Francisco? (And is it still a mailbag if there's only one question?)
Question 1
I hadn't seen anything on the site related to the Chip Kelly hire in San Francisco. Was curious if you thought the Chip Kelly honeymoon was over in the NFL or what/whom might be worth speculating about? Will he have free reign like in Philly? Or will there be the potential to keep his hands off the constant change of player personal?
Adam Bjork (Savage, MN)
As a GM, Kelly was a disaster in Philadelphia. He got rid of three of his best playmakers – LeSean McCoy, Jeremy Maclin and DeSean Jackson – and the guys he brought in simply weren’t good enough. Sam Bradford doesn’t look like he’ll ever develop into a viable starting quarterback. Nelson Agholor might be a blown first-round pick. DeMarco Murray didn’t seem to fit his scheme. He signed Byron Maxwell to a $63 million contract, thinking he could be a shutdown guy, but Maxwell is just an average corner. Clearly, he’s not a guy that any team would want to put in charge of making those kinds of big decisions. But Kelly realizes this, and so do the 49ers. He’ll have input on players, of course, but he doesn’t have final say in San Francisco. He doesn’t want it – he says he just wants to coach. I think he’ll be primarily their offensive coach. At Oregon, and in his three years in Philadelphia, he mostly built off a hurry-up system, trying to confuse defenses with tempo. Does that system still work? I don’t think it will ever be as effective as it was initially, back in 2013. Now that there’s some film out, and defenses have seen what works and doesn’t work, I think more opponents will have developed an immunity to that style of system. At the same time, however, I believe that both of the quarterbacks that the 49ers had last year are better suited than Bradford to run that kind of offense. Bradford doesn’t have any mobility, so they had to chuck all of the zone-read stuff. There was no need for defenses to fear Bradford maybe keeping the ball and running outside, and I think that was big. That threat is supposed to help open things up inside. If Kelly can somehow salvage Colin Kaepernick, his speed makes him perfect for those kind of plays. That looks like a long shot, though. Kaepernick seems to have massive issues with vision and decision making, and I think they’re more likely to just release him. Their other quarterback, Blaine Gabbert, also runs a lot better than Bradford. He averaged 23 rushing yards in the eight games he started, and I remember him hoofing it pretty good for a long touchdowns to help win the Chicago game. Gabbert tends to be regarding as a laughingstock, after the way he struggled in Jacksonville, but he’s been working on his game for a few years. He’s still a former top-10 pick, and I liked the way he played in a lot of his games last year – preseason and late in the year.