SANTA CLARA — What’s the hardest thing for an NFL head coach to do? Get grown men to drop their current football belief system and buy into every little detail you preach.
As the 49ers strapped on the pads for Day 3 of training camp, more key players on the roster are publicly embracing Chip Kelly’s often-criticized coaching style.
Pro Bowl safety Eric Reid is one of them.
“From the things that I heard last year, just watching TV, if it is what they said it was, I think he’s learned from his experience,” Reid said. “I think he got better from it.”
Unless it’s too early in the season for feathers to be ruffled, or people are lying through their teeth, Kelly’s reputation and relationships — with front office members, players and even the media — seem to have taken a 180 degree turn from his turbulent three years in Philadelphia.
Maybe it’s the California air that has relaxed Kelly’s temperament. Or maybe he truly has changed his approach on how to best bring together an NFL football team.
Earlier this week on the Murph and Mac show, Kelly was asked about how he handled Anthony Davis coming back to the team, given his critical comments on Twitter blasting the organization during the offseason. Kelly’s answer to the question shows a completely different person willing to use collaboration instead of alienation.
“I met with the leaders of the team,” Kelly said on KNBR 680. “I don’t make any kind of decision without going through those guys. NaVorro (Bowman), Antoine Betha, Joe Staley, Phil Dawson, Carlos (Hyde). The guys who have been here, Glenn Dorsey. Torrey Smith. We all sat down and discussed him, and they were excited about bringing Anthony back.”
This is noteworthy. This is a changed man. The 49ers’ 2016 record likely won’t reflect a complete turnaround, but Kelly’s enriched coaching style could be the biggest building block heading into 2017.
What has stayed the same is Kelly’s commitment to teaching his players the art of recovery. There are still those famous vitamin shakes (berry and peanut butter chocolate) labeled for every 49er player to grab as they come off the practice field. Kelly has brought in multiple doctors and Marines to speak with the team about how to properly take care of their bodies. Torrey Smith said players get an email every morning detailing where their nutrition is, which has some immediately switching their diets for better performance.
The most welcome change in the 49ers’ locker room is the way Kelly has laid out the schedule for training camp. Reid said last year, Jim Tomsula had the team in meetings often until 11:30 p.m. and back at the facility the next day at 7 a.m. Kelly has placed a much greater emphasis on both sleep and rest, requiring lights out at 11 p.m. at the team hotel, as well as penciling in extra time for the hot/cold tubs after practice and weight lifting sessions. Kelly has made training camp less of a grind on purpose. He’s made football a scientific process.
“The way Chip has our schedule, it’s unheard of,” Reid said. “Practicing in the morning is way better, in my opinion, than practicing in the evening. You have the most energy in the morning. You don’t have to wait around all day and get sleepy. Sitting in the dark rooms and then trying to come out and perform.”
“You can’t always go every single day 100-percent,” Kelly explained. “It’s something we learned a long, long time ago at Oregon. There has to be an undulation so that you get the most out of your training effect and then, really, give them time to recover. There’s two phases to this. It’s they have (to) train and they have to recover and I think sometimes people forget about the recover aspect of things.”
Part of this cautious approach has to do with the tempo Kelly runs his practice (an entirely separate topic we’ll get to shortly). After each intense 11-on-11 session, Kelly blows the whistle and each position group breaks off for a 10-15 minute teaching lesson. These breaks, in addition to special teams drills, allow Kelly and his staff to do a lot more hands-on teaching by showing players film during a live practice on the field.
“We’ll take a look at the Surface while practice is going on and then not only can we say, ‘Hey, on the third play of team, you stepped with your inside foot, you should have stepped with your outside foot.’ You actually can show them visual evidence of that,” Kelly said.
The internal doubts many of the 49ers players had last year about Tomsula calling the shots have clearly subsided in Santa Clara. Chip Kelly is providing an organized structure for players to thrive in.
We’ll see how players react if San Francisco stumbles out of the gates.
But as of right now?
“I like the way he runs the team,” Reid said.