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One of, if not the key thing to watch this summer is how Chip Kelly converts his philosophy and program from college to the pros. Kelly is a guy that everyone that knows him says is incredibly smart and adaptable, but it is true that he has no experience at this level.
And as Kelly explains, it's really the rules and structural things that make the biggest difference. He said he's slowed his practices down in the NFL for those reasons.
"I think it's a little bit slower," said Kelly. "We don't have the number that's we had. And it's also day one. If I go back to day one in Oregon, it was probably similar, to be honest with you. Certainly it won't be the pace that we play out there in the season. During the season, our numbers are drastically down. At the college level you have 105 players for practice. After the first game, that actually goes up. In the National Football League, you have 53 on your roster, and you have eight other practice guys, you have 61 guys available to practice. At this time, it's offense going against the defense. We're not preparing to play against an opponent. So we're not breaking things down from a real schematic standpoint and who your scout players are and that. We're just trying to implement our offense and our defense. I thought for an off‑season pace, it was pretty good."
Kelly says he will be stressing efficiency in his practices
"What we want to do is get our work done. We're not going to be out there for a long time, so I would argue that we don't practice as long as other teams. It's just we try to eliminate and be as efficient as possible. But we also go from really basically in football the real common concept is there are two speeds in football, there is game speed and teach speed. If you're going to do something else at any other speed, why do it?"
He continued on his practice structure.
"We segment our practices in a certain manner that if we're going to have a full team speed period, the next period after that is a teach period because we know we can't continue to 35 minutes straight of all team. Even though you change what the situation is, there needs to be a break in there. So if we want our guys to understand how to play at game tempo, we have to kind of gear it like game tempo. So really, it's short bursts, get in, get out, get your work done, and let's go back to teach mode. Get in, get out, get your work done and get back to teach mode."