Why Mark Helfrich has given Oregon reason to stop missing Chip Kelly
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – The old coaching adage says you never want to be the guy who replaces the legend. To do so is to find yourself competing against not just present-day opponents but memories of past glories and the outsized belief of what your predecessor would've perfectly done.
This is true enough when the legend is old and retired. It's even tougher when he's still active, still on top of his game and – in the case of the University of Oregon and its logistics king Chip Kelly – just moved to the NFL where each Sunday everyone can watch him still revolutionizing the game.
Mark Helfrich is the man who attempted to replace that legend the past two seasons, despite being just 41 and having no prior head-coaching experience. Late on a Friday night, here he was standing on the sideline of Levi's Stadium, coaching out the final minute of the Ducks' 51-13 destruction of Arizona in the Pac-12 title game. It would push Oregon to 12-1, secure a spot in the inaugural College Football Playoff and assure a semifinal game at the Rose Bowl down in Pasadena.
[Oregon routs Arizona: Should Ducks be ranked No. 1 for playoff?]
Helfrich was accepting congratulatory hugs from assistant coaches during that final minute when his players snagged a big water jug, snuck up behind him and dumped it over his head, offering not just a celebratory bath but also a baptism of credibility.
Chip Kelly is gone. Oregon is still here.
The significance of that moment, the importance for the likeable Helfrich, no matter how loath he is to discuss it, was clear to everyone around the program.
"He's proven himself as a head coach," Phil Knight, the Nike founder and Oregon super booster, said later as the Ducks were presented the league title and yellow and green confetti fell. "Not just as a coach, but a great head coach. He's a very, very bright man. He learned a lot from Chip Kelly, but he was also a part of the Chip Kelly era. He contributed his fair share."
"I've wanted to win this year for a lot of reasons," offensive coordinator Scott Frost said. "But I wanted to win so bad for Mark Helfrich. People were going to be quick to judge Mark no matter what happened because of the success Chip had. Maybe people will finally realize what a great coach they do have coaching here at Oregon."
This was the backdrop here. Not that advancing to the playoff wasn't enough, but this has been the backdrop for two seasons, since Kelly left and his friend, right-hand man and offensive coordinator assumed the throne.
During Kelly's four seasons from 2009-12, the Ducks went 46-7, finishing in the top four nationally the final three years, including a title game loss in 2010. Oregon went from a regional team and a fashion curiosity to a true national power.
Kelly was seen as the architect, this quick-talking, fast-thinking football savant, an outrageously popular larger-than-life figure despite his brief tenure. That's what brought the Philadelphia Eagles calling and, now on the verge of consecutive NFL playoff appearances, glad they did.
When Kelly departed, no matter how much he talked up Helfrich or left the program with the cupboard stocked with talent like quarterback Marcus Mariota, no one knew if the great times would last.
A year ago Oregon lost two conference games and wound up in the Alamo Bowl, an 11-2 season feeling like a disappointment to many fans. Then this year came an October upset at home to Arizona that seemed to raise fears that Mariota's senior season could be lost and the program that had come so close to winning it all might be backsliding the way programs often do after the legend leaves.
Maybe Helfrich was too nice. Maybe he wasn't experienced enough. Maybe he just wasn't Chip Kelly.
Turns out Helfrich didn't waver in his faith in not just the Oregon system and his ability to succeed, but also in the people around him.
"Mark's the same guy everyday," Frost said. "He comes to work, win or lose."
So too do the people who follow him, players and staff that were as committed to saving the season and maximizing their obviously great potential as they were to prove to the outside world that their head coach was more than all right.
"We just have an unbelievable group of players as people," Helfrich said. "Unbelievable group of assistant coaches that came back. The next day [after the Arizona loss] every single guy in our program was on the practice field, 25 minutes before they had to be, fixing it. It wasn't, 'Hey, you screwed this up, you did this wrong.' It's, 'How do we do this better?'
"And they haven't looked back."
The Ducks have now won eight consecutive games, doing so by an average of 26.5 points. They've been so dominant that of the 560 minutes played during that stretch, they've trailed just 17 minutes, 30 seconds and never in the second half. The offense has hummed. The defense has tightened. In the first half Friday, Oregon outgained Arizona 386-25 in total yardage. This team is peaking just as the postseason arrives.
Oregon looks as good as Oregon has ever looked … under any coach.
"I don't know if it's the best team we've ever had, but it's right there," Knight said.
Helfrich does a lot of things like Chip Kelly, but his best attribute might be his comfort in not trying to be Chip Kelly. He's an Oregon native, not a New Englander. He's married with two children, not a bachelor. He's found his own way to keep the Oregon machine rolling with all the tried-and-true principles, yet hasn't hesitated to do it his way while constantly looking for cutting edge improvements.
"We haven't missed a beat," senior linebacker Tony Washington said. "It's an easy transition when you have a great coach."
His players love him, and it shows in how hard they play.
"We knew he was doubted," senior linebacker Derrick Malone Jr. said. "Definitely. [He was] the new guy coming in. But he's stepped out of the shadow. He doesn't try to be like [Kelly] in any way. He's his own guy."
Helfrich says he never worried about trying to fulfill anyone else's expectations of him, whether fair or based on the supposed infallibility of his predecessor. There was no point in it. Chip Kelly wasn't here. Helfrich was.
"You can't concern yourself with that," Helfrich said, standing just outside the victorious Oregon locker room. "We are just concerned every day about putting every single person in our program in a better position, as advantageous of a position as possible whether that's on the field, whether that's competitively, trying to recruit bigger, faster, smarter, higher character, all along the way. And keeping everybody into that process is our No. 1 challenge every single day."
He controls what he can control. He sets the plan he can set. Assumptions, comparisons, opinions, fan panics … those serve no purpose.
He'd rather it be left at that, rather it be that simple, rather it just be about Oregon. But if his players and coaches are saying that the joy of this night was, at least in part, about cementing his reputation, well …
"Obviously that's humbling," Helfrich said.
Wistful memories and worries over the future suddenly seem so ridiculous. Where there was once concern there is now just a shiny new championship trophy and the promise of the possibility of another in the works.
Mark Helfrich is here. And so still are the Ducks.
