The Las Vegas Raiders fired offensive coordinator Chip Kelly hours after a 24-10 loss to the Cleveland Browns.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter and NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport first reported the news.
“I am grateful for the opportunity with the Raiders, bottom line in this league you have to win,” Kelly told Jay Glazer of Fox Sports. “I really loved those players, I’m a huge, huge Geno Smith fan, that was one of the best parts of this experience for me, working with Geno and those guys every day. But hey, we gotta win. I get it.”
The Raiders have made the midseason firings of special teams coordinator Tom McMahon and Kelly amidst a 2-9 campaign.
Kelly was reportedly making $6 million per season and was the NFL’s most highly-paid offensive coordinator.
But the Raiders have been disappointing on offense, especially considering the presence of young stars in tight end Brock Bowers and running back Ashton Jeanty. Those struggles came to a head on Sunday, when the Cleveland Browns sacked Geno Smith 10 times, forced a turnover and held the Raiders to 10 points and 268 yards of total offense (including just 60 on the ground).
The Raiders have been held to 16 or fewer points in four of their past five games and six times overall this season.
Las Vegas isn’t exactly brimming with talent on offense, of course, outside of Bowers and Jeanty. The talent in the receiving corps is minimal, the offensive line has struggled all season and Smith is having a very poor year (13 touchdowns, 13 interceptions).
But Kelly hasn’t seemed to put his playmakers in great positions either. Jeanty has rushed over 100 yards just once this season despite flashing serious ability. Bowers only has two games with over 100 yards receiving and only two games with double-digit targets (although injuries have limited him to eight total contests).
Head coach Pete Carroll even hinted in October that he wasn’t happy with the offensive play-calling.
“We have to run the football better, more,” he told reporters. “And we’re going to continue to work at it and see if we can’t continue to bring it to life. The running game has looked well in order right now, we need to get more of them. That’s part of it. That’s just mixing football. That’s how you do it. We don’t ever want to rely on the quarterback has to do the whole show, sitting in the shotgun, throw the football. Never coach that way. So we have to mix our stuff so we can use our play action game.”
Apparently, that hasn’t meaningfully changed since, and the Raiders have been a fairly miserable watch on offense all season long. That made Sunday night’s decision feel pretty inevitable.
