Chip Kelly was supposed to be a football sorcerer, a supreme coaching talent with a mysterious past whose mix of old-school hard-nosed attitude, bleeding-edge Xs-and-Os and super-secret sports science wizardry was going to usher in a new era of football, where Kelly and the Eagles reigned over the NFL galaxy.

Trent Baalke was supposed to be 49ers owner Jed York’s right-hand man, running the football operations with class, cleverness and an almost-fanatic level of loyalty to the cause.

Kelly wrested personnel power from Howie Roseman in Philadelphia, and terminated everyone who dared stand up to him. The team exploded spectacularly. “This should have worked,” wrote The MMQB’s Peter King, and it’s easy to imagine Kelly seething and muttering the same thing.

Baalke won a similar power struggle against head coach Jim Harbaugh, but his glorious triumph at the right hand of the master ended in a massive flame-out.

Now, like Kylo Ren and General Hux, these two flawed leaders will be working side-by-side:

At first blush, Kelly is a terrible choice.

Reading between the lines of public statements by Baalke and York, Harbaugh was run out of San Francisco for being arrogant, abrasive, a control freak with a habit of stepping on everyone’s toes. Those same personality quirks could certainly be attributed to Chip “I Urine-Test All My Players Every Day” Kelly.

Meanwhile, Baalke’s inability to adapt to and work with Harbaugh blew up a dynasty in the making. No coach in NFL history was better, faster—and inscrutable mumblings about “winning with class” and a “mutual parting” can’t cover up the fact that Baalke fired a great head coach and replaced him with a terrible one.

Now, in a sense, the wrong has been righted: Jim Tomsula is out, and the 49ers got a strong head coach. Can the 49ers really recapture the conference-championship threepeat magic?

Yes—but only if Kelly and Baalke have learned anything from their failures. (Ed note: so you’re not suggesting they build a FOURTH Death Star, then?)

San Francisco 49ers v St Louis Rams

In Colin Kaepernick, Kelly has the kind of quarterback he’s needed since day one. He didn’t play nearly as well as Sam Bradford did in 2015—but Bradford didn’t play that well, and Kaepernick can do football things Bradford doesn’t even know are possible. Drafting Kaepernick out of Nevada’s innovative offense and developing him into a Super Bowl quarterback is Harbaugh’s greatest achievement; resurrecting Kaepernick’s career would be Kelly’s.

What else will Kelly have to work with? The offensive line is greatly diminished from a couple of seasons ago, and guard Alex Boone seems to have one foot out the door. But Carlos Hyde anchors a relay team’s worth of good tailbacks coming off of IR, Anquan Boldin refuses to age and Torrey Smith produced as well as a deep threat can when no quarterback can get him the ball.

It’s hardly the squad full of Pro Bowlers Kelly inherited in Philadelphia, but it’s far from the worst collection of offensive talent in the NFL. Under Geep Chryst, though, the 49ers finished dead last in scoring offense, averaging a miserable 14.9 points per game.

For all of Kelly’s struggles, his own poor personnel decisions and bad luck with injuries, the Eagles finished 13th, with 23.6 points per game. Surely Hyde, Reggie Bush, Boldin and Smith are better than, or at least as good as, Demarco Murray, Ryan Mathews, Jordan Matthews and Nelson Agholor. With a rejuvenated Kaepernick—or hey, maybe the free-agent Bradford himself—under center, Kelly should be able to Force-push this unit to far better production in 2016.

Per Cam Inman of the Bay Area News Group, Kelly’s in the midst of assembling his staff, so we won’t know if there’ll be any continuity on either offense or defense. There’s a strong case to be made for keeping Eric Mangini, though: Despite an unprecedented offseason talent exodus of up-and-comers, Pro Bowlers, All-Pros and Hall of Famers, his defense only allowed a field goal more per game than Vic Fangio’s 2014 defense.

If Kelly can admit that he isn’t so great he can roll out of bed coach a group of no-name scrubs to the Super Bowl—if he can admit he needs talent to win—he has a great opportunity to in in San Francisco.

This offseason is crucial for Baalke, too. After refusing to loosen his grip on the roster during the Harbaugh years, it’s clear his approach to the draft—drafting and “redshirting” injured players, for example—was almost completely fruitless. His repeated public affirmations of trouble pass-rusher Aldon Smith couldn’t have been a bigger embarrassment, and it was 100 percent on him.

If Baalke isn’t chastened, isn’t willing to work hand-in-glove with the head coach he’s just hired, isn’t willing to admit he only has as much power as Supreme Leader…sorry, team president Jed York allows him, his time in San Francisco will be over very, very quickly.

But if these two men can meet each other in the middle, they’ll each be able to say they delivered York, Santa Clara, San Francisco (and maybe the entire Bay Area) an exciting, innovative, perennial contender—just like it should have been all along.

About Ty Schalter

Ty Schalter is thrilled to be part of The Comeback. A member of the Pro Football Writers of America, Ty also works as an NFL columnist for Bleacher Report and VICE Sports, and regular host for Sirius XM’s Bleacher Report Radio. In another life, he was an IT cubicle drone with a pretentious Detroit Lions blog.