After an abysmal season, the San Francisco 49ers have announced they will bring in a new head coach to turn the team around. Well, we learned this morning that the organization has made a decision: Chip Kelly, formerly of the Philadelphia Eagles, is the team's new coach. Kelly is widely known in football circles as an odd, secretive, and hyper-controlling man — seeing how this plays out with the Niners should make for an interesting 2016 season.
Kelly had mixed success when he was with the Eagles, and the Chronicle informs us that he has a 26-21 record and failed to make the playoffs in his two previous seasons. The paper goes on to note that "Kelly’s reputation around the league is tarnished," and quoted a former player who suggested that the coach is racist.
“The relationship was never really great,” explained LeSean McCoy, who currently plays for the Buffalo Bills. "He wants the full control. You see how fast he got rid of all the good players. Especially all the good black players.”
McCoy is not alone in that accusation — an in-depth profile last summer by the Washington Post also notes that Kelly has been accused of being a racist.
Interestingly, the Post also quotes one of his former players as saying that the coach had the players listen to Ricky Martin and songs from "The Lion King" while they practiced.
“There’s plenty of weirdos in the NFL,” the unnamed former players tells the paper. “He’s just a different kind of weirdo.”
The Post piece also helpfully informs us that while coaching the Eagles "[it] seemed Kelly valued each morning’s urine test — plastic specimen cups waiting in locker stalls, jersey numbers written in black ink — as much as how a player performed during practice or a game."
Despite the weirdness, it might be hard for Kelly to be loved less than the recently fired Tomsula.
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