Chip Kelly delivered interesting remarks about his perspective on statistics in relation to hiring Bill Davis as defensive coordinator.
“I think people get so caught up in statistics that sometimes it’s baffling to me. You may look at a guy and say, ‘Well, they were in the bottom of the league defensively.’ Well, they had 13 starters out. They should be at the bottom of the league defensively. Is that Billy’s fault? I don’t know what it was, but I don’t look at it that way. I hired [former Oregon offensive coordinator and current Oregon head coach] Mark Helfrich as our offensive coordinator when I was at the University of Oregon. Their numbers were not great at Colorado. But you sit down and talk football with Helf for about 10 minutes. He’s a pretty sharp guy and really brought a lot to the table, and he’s done an outstanding job. He’s now the head coach at Oregon. Whoever coached Adrian Peterson, is that the best running back coach in the country? I don’t know. I’ve got to meet him. He could actually be. But let’s find out what he teaches. Some of it, you’re teaching to what you have available to you and sometimes that’s something that I consider. So I don’t look at the statistics part of it and say, ‘Hey, we need to get that coach.’ Sometimes, honestly, if you look at statistics, you need to get that player.”