The Ohio State Buckeyes lost their offensive coordinator on Friday afternoon after less than a month on the job when Bill O’Brien decided to leave the team to become the next head coach of the Boston College Eagles, but it sure didn’t take long for Ohio State to find his replacement.
According to a report from college football insider Bruce Feldman of the Athletic, Ohio State is expected to hire current UCLA head coach Chip Kelly to replace Bill O’Brien as the team’s offensive coordinator.
“BREAKING: UCLA’s Chip Kelly is expected to become the new OC at Ohio State, per source. Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day played for Kelly at UNH and later coached with him at three stops,” Feldman wrote in a post on X, the social media website that was formerly known as Twitter.
BREAKING: UCLA’s Chip Kelly is expected to become the new OC at Ohio State, per source. Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day played for Kelly at UNH and later coached with him at three stops. https://t.co/PDDOB76rDq
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) February 9, 2024
Obviously, this is some pretty big news for the Buckeyes and Kelly, and it’s pretty shocking that a Power Five head coach is leaving to become the offensive coordinator elsewhere, and it led to a lot of reactions on social media.
UCLA kept a head coach nobody wanted all the way through the coaching carousel, and the transfer portal window *and* national signing day, just so he could leave to take a demotion.
This is generational mismanagement. https://t.co/PikM393Vbw
— Ryan Rosenblatt (@RyanRosenblatt) February 9, 2024
Pretty wild that this is the current state of college football (stealing a P5 HC to be a P5 OC), but think this is significantly better for OSU than BOB.
Instantly meshes with Day’s pass scheme, but expands on run diversity and ability to go heavy https://t.co/pbQWTp13Je
— Space Coyote (@SpaceCoyoteBDS) February 9, 2024
Unbelievable https://t.co/iWRzR474ii
— Ari Wasserman (@AriWasserman) February 9, 2024
Upgrade over Bill O’Brien https://t.co/2D9Kpfep4W
— Brett (@BLeez17) February 9, 2024
A Big Ten coach leaving for a Big Ten assistant job is a new one. https://t.co/VEhqEBjS5o
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) February 9, 2024
Incredible content. https://t.co/r595387GfN
— Adam Kramer (@KegsnEggs) February 9, 2024
I truly do not know if I’ve ever seen a head coach leave their job for a coordinator position within their own conference before? https://t.co/BH4uc5gpQR
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) February 9, 2024
Clearly, over the past few weeks, Chip really wanted to get out of UCLA. https://t.co/CuYzOfjqQY
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) February 9, 2024
Ohio State head coach Ryan Day and Kelly have a long history together stemming back to their early days at New Hampshire where Ryan Day was actually Kelly’s quarterback while he was the team’s offensive coordinator. The two then worked together at New Hampshire when Day joined the staff, then again with the Philadelphia Eagles and the San Francisco 49ers.
