Sports Radio Interviews

Chip Kelly on LeGarrette Blount: “He’s Not Coming Back to Carry the Ball 25 or 30 Times For Us Saturday Night Against Arizona State”

It has been a very interesting season for the Oregon Ducks.  For starters little known Chip Kelly took over as Head Coach of the Ducks after just one season as offensive coordinator.  Things did not look good at the start for Oregon and it wasn’t exactly the way Chip Kelly envisioned his first season as Head Coach going.  After getting belted in the first game of the season against Boise State, their starting running back LeGarrette Blount melted down and punched a Boise State player prompting a suspension.   After the loss and the suspension, some people wrote off the Ducks.  However, thanks to their explosive offense, Oregon ran off seven wins in a row including a huge win against Pac 10 foe, USC.  This past weekend the Ducks went on the road, lost their first conference game of the season to Stanford and may have seen the BCS dreams vanish. 

They still own the best record in the Pac 10 at the moment, but now they have to run the table to capture the conference championship and punch their ticket to the Rose Bowl.  Given the way the season started and the adversity the team has faced this season, the fact that they have a chance to capture the Pac 10 title should speak volumes about the job Chip Kelly has done with his team this season.

Chip Kelly joined XX Sports Radio in San Diego with Darren Smith to talk about the crowd support for Oregon, the difficulties of playing in the Pac 10, the loss against Stanford, and the decision to reinstate LeGarrette Blount.

On the crowd at Autzen Stadium:

“I think they’re just passionate, they’re very knowledgeable and we’ve sold out every game here I think since 1999.  The state of Oregon loves the University of Oregon Ducks and it’s a distinct advantage I can tell you that.”

On playing everybody in the Pac 10:

“Well we do play everybody in conference right now.  (Host: I know, but is that a good idea?)  Yeah if you wanna have a true conference champion, you’ve gotta play everybody.  It wouldn’t be fair if the top team in the league is Oregon and one team doesn’t have to play them and the other team has to.  How do you grade who is going to be the champion if you don’t all play each other?  We feel like we have the best conference in the country and whoever is the Pac 10 champ, is truly the champ.  They don’t avoid playing another team so they can pad their record, they can pad their stats.  I’ll put our conference up against anybody.  We were 5-0 in bowl games last tear, we went 20-9 this year out of conference and I think it just lends to people understanding that we are the best conference in the country.”

On implementing an easier non-conference opponent to their schedule:

“I don’t know what that would do for us.  We got a cupcake win because we played Adams State?  Our out of conference schedule, we played Boise State at Boise State and nobody will go there.  We played Purdue.  And we played Utah, who had the nation’s longest winning streak.  We’re not about playing cupcakes here at Oregon; we want to play the best.  We feel like we are in the best conference and we feel we have the best out of conference schedule.”

On what went wrong against Stanford:

“I think when people ask me the question about what went wrong against Stanford it takes away from the fact that Stanford is an outstanding football team.  I think Toby Gerhart is one of the best running backs in the country.  He had 38 carries for 200 and 30 some odd yards.  They’ve got a great young redshirt freshman quarterback in Andrew Luck who made some really good plays.  I just think we played against a really, really good offensive football team and we lost in a shootout.”

On the timeline for LeGarrette Blount’s reinstatement:

“I suspended LeGarrette after the incident at Boise State.  I made it a season long suspension because I don’t think he would’ve gotten it if it was an indefinite suspension.  Everything he would’ve done would’ve been well I’m going to try and get back on this team.  So I really needed to see if he was remorseful and understood what he did was wrong.  He proved to me in the subsequent weeks to that he really did know he did something wrong.  About two and a half weeks after the initial suspension I met with Dr. Harry Edwards, I brought him to campus so we had an outside source meet with LG and sit down and give me his opinion of it.  What he thought was should we do something to help rehabilitate the kid.  We put a plan in place at that point in time, he did everything that we asked him to do and it ended up being an 8 game suspension when the NCAA ruled a one game suspension.  I believed his actions warranted more than a one-game suspension.  I’ve always believed that discipline is about improving behavior and I’ve seen an improvement in LeGarrette’s behavior and we’re giving him an opportunity to come back.” 

On what role LeGarrette Blount will have when he comes back:

“He’s coming back as a backup.  I’ve said this all along; it’s not a football decision.  LeMichael James is our running back and he’ll be our starting running back for the rest of the season.  LeGarrette is coming back in a backup role and he’s just going to get an opportunity to play again.  He’s not coming back to carry the ball 25 or 30 times for us Saturday night against Arizona State I can tell you that.”

Listen to Chip Kelly on XX Sports Radio with Darren Smith 

Tags: Chip Kelly, College Football, LeGarrette Blount, Oregon Ducks, Pac-10