UCLA Football: Is 2020 a make-or-break year for Chip Kelly?

Chip Kelly has just seven wins in two years with UCLA football does that mean he’s facing a make-or-break year with the Bruins in 2020?

Who would have thought we’d be at this point in the Chip Kelly experience? Two years into his tenure at UCLA, the former successful Oregon head coach has won just seven games, all of which have been in conference play.

Kelly has a 7-11 record in Pac-12 action and it 7-17 overall, making him 0-6 in non-conference games which is just shocking given the amount of winnable contests he’s had.

We already know the start to his career at UCLA has been nothing short of a disappointment, but is it too early to call it a failed experiment? It’s approaching that territory and year three may be the tipping point. If he doesn’t make a bowl game this upcoming season, he may be on his way out of Westwood. Given the precedents of new coaches from the past few seasons, it’s almost likely that year three is the decider (Willie Taggart and Chad Morris didn’t even get that far).

Kelly has a successful past, though, and that’s intriguing enough for the UCLA athletic department to give him a longer leash. He may only have seven wins in two years, but he was 46-7 at Oregon in four seasons and has shown the ability to succeed.

No, this isn’t Oregon and we aren’t in 2012 anymore, but Kelly went to a national title game and coached some of the most prolific offenses in college football. He deserves another shot, or two.

Most of his guys are just getting acclimated on the roster and he didn’t recruit most of his key players. His Dorian Thompson-Robinson-led offense ranked 42nd in passing and 81st in rushing and while that may not seem all that impressive, it’s an improvement from his first year. Another year of experience for DTR and he could be one of the Pac-12’s best quarterbacks.

The offense just needs to find a way to put points on the board and that will happen with a more consistent run game, not the one that saw Joshua Kelley take a step back in 2019.

Kelly is facing a make-or-break 2020 season and it’s not so much his teams not improving but more so the “what have you done for me lately” mentality that most major programs believe in.

If the Bruins don’t win at least six games and head to a bowl game this season, we could be talking about one of the most disappointing hires from the 2018 offseason. But if Matt Rhule can go 1-11 in year one and make the Sugar Bowl in year three, Kelly can experience the same success at a program with plenty of resources.