Can Chip Kelly Save the Ohio State Backfield From Cannibalization?
Can Chip Kelly Save the Ohio State Backfield From Cannibalization?
The Lord sometimes challenges us, doesn't he Eli?
- Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood (2007)
It’s been a big 365 days for Ohio State head coach Ryan Day. For starters, he fired off one of the most bizarre strays of all time at my man Lou Holtz after a convincing win over a fully-manned Notre Dame team early last season. That was a big statement win for the boys. They needed that after Day spent the entire offseason crying about Javon ‘The Bull’ Bullard’s hit on MHjr. in the Peach Bowl, which everyone agrees was a football play.
Day fired off some shots at UGA head coach Kirby Smart, too, to which Kirby promptly replied:
“Stop crying, you snivelling ass! Stop your nonsense.”
This, evidently, affected Day on a personal level. After a third straight loss to his archrival Jim Harbaugh (and the Wolverines), he managed to make a blockbuster move in hiring former Texas A&M AD Ross ‘Arbitrage’ Bjork. The OG readers from last season will remember that name.
His next move was to bring in a new OC—a move that saw Chip Kelly happily step down as head coach from UCLA—to replace Bill O’Brien.
What was Bjork’s first task as the AD of the Ohio State University? Level up the NIL war chest. And level it up he did. Day and co. extracted some revenge on Kirby and the UGA conglomerate by stealing star safety Caleb Downs in the middle of the night on a last-second deal. A ‘hit’ the Bulldogs staff didn’t see coming at a crucial moment, you could say.
At the same time—fortunately for the Buckeyes—a young man by the name of Quinshon Judkins was heavily engaged in negotiations to beef up his starting salary in the ‘Sip.
(Lane) “What would you like, QJ?”
(QJ) “Ten thousand dollars.”
“For what?”
“For my church.”
“That’s good. That’s a good one.”
QJ left for Ohio State shortly thereafter. It would have appeared to be a Hollywood dream come true for the CFF community if not for one pesky detail: that asshole TreVeyon Henderson chose to ‘run it back’ for one more ride.
Yet, there are still some in the community who cling to optimism regarding the potential production of both runners in a Chip Kelly run offence. Kelly, perhaps despite his reputation, is actually a pretty run-heavy bloke. His five year average excluding the COVID year is a 55/45 split in favour of the ground. And it may surprise the reader to know that Ryan Day’s is similar at 53/47.
This raises the question, is there a precedent for this? Put more precisely: do any of these three coaches (Ryan Day, Brian Hartline, Chip Kelly) have a season in their repertoires where two RBs were both productive enough to be CFF rosterable? I’m not even talking about elite, just CFF relevant.
With that bar in mind, let us take a look at the system in place here under the three aforementioned gentlemen.
Coaching & System
Some of you who were around last summer might remember an article I did on UCLA’s TJ Harden, in which I reflected on a very unpleasant experience I had traveling between Toronto and Ottawa the week before. In it, I vowed to never draft another Chip Kelly RB in CFF ever again.
Had Henderson left for the draft this offseason it would have put that promise to the test. In an offence where there is one clear workhorse, Kelly’s track record is quite clear: he will feed him the ball. Unfortunately, if your name is Zach Charbonnet, you’ll also get pulled out of the lineup randomly at a whim (with no warning to the public, of course). Damn you Chip Kelly, you bastard.
Personal vendettas aside, the man knows how to coach a productive offence.
As can be seen in Table 1., Kelly’s RB1 over the last five full seasons averages around 19 PPG in half ppr formats. Even crazier, his coaching mates are side-by-side with him with averages over 19 PPG each. It does beg the question: if QJ was alone in this backfield, would he have challenged OGII and Jeanty for CFF’s 1.01 this year? Probably!
Unfortunately, that isn’t the case, and it’s in assessing the RB2s when things start to break down. The highest average of the three coaches is just over 10.5 PPG from Kelly. In fact, we can probably look at his very last season with the Bruins for what to potentially expect in terms of numbers from his top two OSU runners, because his RBs shared carries pretty evenly last year:
Is there anybody out there feeling good about those numbers?… No? That’s OK, because Kelly actually has more of a pattern of this than originally expected (🤢). Here are the top rushers from 2021:
Charbonnet had a better portion of the split than his colleague, but there was still a pretty healthy split. Still, our boy Charbz cleared 1000 yards, 10 TDs, and 200 carries, so one can only complain so much. And even in the 2023 season, you could argue that Harden was probably CFF relevant enough to be on some rosters (in deeper formats, at least).
But surely, with two high round NFL draft hopefuls in your backfield, this is a slightly different situation than when you had Brittain Brown toting the rock back there. With two talents like QJ and Hendo, I’d imagine there will be an emphasis on getting them the ball, someway, somehow.
Ohio State returns approximately 78% of the OL snaps from a year ago, however there are concerns that this may be one of the weakest units on the team (which maybe isn’t saying that much all things considering).
Expectations for 2024
There’s a quote that I particularly like that says “you can have it all, you just can’t have it all at once”. That could prove to be true with the OSU backfield this season. Sure, there will be games where each one of them lights off 2-3 scores on 100+ yards rushing and 20 carries. Telling when those games will occur ahead of time and who will be the beneficiary is a fool’s errand.
From that standpoint, you’re now looking at two players who only hold value in bestball formats. That might not bother many of you, especially if you’re coming over from the UD Bestball mania action (welcome, by the way).
However, if you’re a fairly new CFF player, and perhaps contemplating selecting one of these Buckeye runners in a standard league (i.e., you choose who you start each week), I’d advise you to reconsider.
Some people are of the mind that OSU will be running the ball so much that both players can get theirs. I personally don’t see how that is possible. This is a staff that historically averages a pretty balanced split in run vs. pass. Additionally, one of the co-offensive coordinators has recruited numerous talented wide receivers from different regions of the country. This is likely due to the promise that three years in Columbus as a WR will get you into the first round of the NFL draft, a feat that tends to require some productive stat lines along the way.
And that isn’t even mentioning the fact that—thanks to our good friend Bjork—KSU QB Will Howard was also brought in to hopefully beat Michigan—cough sorry, I mean, bolster the passing attack.
Sure, maybe a lowly recruit like Jeremiah Smith gets frustrated and heads back to Florida next offseason, no biggie. But you can’t afford to hemorrhage gangsters like Kojo Antwi, or my boy Jayden Ballard. These would be blows in the receiving room that would be hard to recover from. Forget about beating Michigan, you’ll be lucky to beat Michigan State at that point.
All that to say, there are a lot of mouths to feed here. And there’s only so much milkshake to go around.
To answer the question that was raised earlier (is there a season we can look to as a ‘proof of concept’ to suggest that there can be value in both runners in standard formats), the answer is a pretty demonstrably ‘no’, not recently at least.
However, if we go back all the way to the Oregon days, we do find something that is interesting…
This was a pretty sick campaign at Oregon during the 2008 CFB season. This year is basically the exact proof of concept you’d be looking for if you’re of the mind that you want to draft these players. Neither got more than 200 carries, but the offence was so good that they both went over 1000 yards and both scored double digit times along the ground anyway.
That actually is possible here given the similarities between OSU’s talent advantage over most of its opponents, and Oregon’s schematic advantage at the time over PAC12 opponents. The play of OSU’s offensive line will be a crucial component in that equation.
From that standpoint, it is not completely out of the realm of comprehension that both could be CFF viable, and even above average assets at RB. But on the balance of probabilities, I’m just not sure I see the reasoning here to take the chance, especially on QJ (who has the higher ADP currently at 42.3), given the limited upside of each so long as the other is healthy.
In bestball formats, there is more justification in acquiring each via draft capital. I personally am not a big fan of using draft picks on RBs who I know are in committees, regardless of the format.
However, for those who are, I’d argue that waiting and taking Hendo, whose ADP of 78 according to Campus2Canton puts him 2-3 rounds behind QJ on average, is the much more prudent move. There is very little tangible evidence, if any at all, to suggest one’s production profile in the 2024 season will be higher than the other, but one just happens to be significantly cheaper. ◾
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