Chip Kelly to the NFL? Jaguars should be in the hunt if so

With the way the season is looking for the Jacksonville Jaguars, it's virtually a given that owner Shad Khan is going to blow the whole thing up. Gene Smith is likely fired at the end of the season and it likely means the coaching staff is also gutted, which leads me to this bit of news: Oregon head coach Chip Kelly is likely destined for the NFL. Kelly to the NFL isn't new either, as he flirted with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last season and was nearly hired.

Some believe the trip the to NFL is inevitable for Oregon's head coach.

"It's just inevitable that he will eventually be in the NFL," Bellotti told Dennis Dodd of CBS. "Chip is one of the ultimate competitors and he sees that. It actually surprised me he changed his mind [with the Bucs] last year. Whether they get to the national championship and whether they win the national championship, I don't know. To think he'll stay there when ultimately his idea of top jobs is to get to the Super Bowl, it won't happen, unfortunately, at the college level."

While many who haven't watched much Oregon will immediately scoff at the idea of hiring a head coach who runs a spread offense, saying it won't work in the NFL, they'd be wrong. It's not that Kelly's offense he runs right now will work in the NFL, it's that Kelly's offense contains loads and loads of NFL concepts and his up-tempo style is likely going to be the new wave of what NFL offenses do.

The New England Patriots have done it for years and the rest of the league is starting to try to play catchup, as you can see teams like the Baltimore Ravens and such playing more and more up tempo on offense.

If Kelly is indeed headed to the NFL and the Jaguars are gutting everything, he should be the No. 1 target for the Jaguars in my opinion. I do believe what a lot of what Kelly does offensively will translate to the NFL, and he's proven he doesn't need a "running" quarterback to get it done. It would also be another in the step of Khan being aggressive and trying to get ahead of the curb, like he's done with the London game in securing marketing rights oversees.

Another interesting note as well with Chip Kelly is his use of advanced metrics in his play calling and coaching decisions. Kelly is a big propionate of making decisions based on mathematical logic. You'll often see Oregon go for two on their first score of the game depending on things the other team does, go for it on fourth-down in their own territory, and onside kick at seemingly random times. But, this is all based on mathematical analytics, which is something the Jaguars front office is starting to get into and add as a tool in their toolbox.

Now, I don't want to sit here and be firing Mike Mularkey nine games into the season, because I do truly like Mularkey and think he has done some good things in regards to growing the Jaguars offense, but it seems it's inevitable he's going to go with the general manager who's hired. If the Jaguars are smart, they'll be aggressive at trying to lure one of the best offensive minds from the ranks of college football and get ahead of the curve.