When David Braun reflected Wednesday on what the new Ryan Field opener against Penn State on Oct. 2 will feel like, he said he got goosebumps.
But the Northwestern coach then noted that it’s his job to make sure his team brings the new $862 million stadium to life. Sitting to Braun’s left, listening intently, was the man who will have to play a large role in making that happen.
A day after announcing the stadium’s opener, Northwestern tried to build excitement by officially introducing new offensive coordinator Chip Kelly with a news conference Wednesday in Evanston. The Wildcats hired Kelly a little more than a month ago to revive an offense that ranked 96th in FBS in both scoring and total offense while going 7-6 in 2025.
Kelly, 62, arrived at Northwestern with 35 years of NFL and collegiate coaching experience. He has been the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, UCLA and the prolific Oregon teams that went 46-7 and made the BCS championship in 2010. He won a national championship as the offensive coordinator at Ohio State in 2024.
Now he joins a Northwestern team that hasn’t won a Big Ten championship since 2000.
So the more relevant questions Wednesday weren’t about why Northwestern chose Kelly, but why Kelly chose Northwestern.
“As I looked through everything, this was a situation that you got excited about,” Kelly said. “You’re excited about moving into a new stadium, excited about an up-and-coming team. And I think the landscape of college football has changed as everybody knows, so it’s a chance to start with a really good program, with really good people.”
Kelly’s first impression of Braun was from the opposite sideline. He coached against Northwestern in 2024 at Wrigley Field while calling plays for Ohio State.
Ohio State beat Northwestern 31-7 and put up 420 yards of offense that day. But the Buckeyes averaged 429.4 yards and 35.7 points per game that season, went 14-2 and won a national championship. Their offense did worse to other teams.
So Kelly said he was enamored with the Northwestern defense. The Wildcats were well coached, and he thought they made it a “tough, hard-nosed battle.” He took that impression into his exploration of joining NU’s staff after Braun decided to move on from former offensive coordinator Zach Lujan in December.
Kelly, who was looking for a job after the Las Vegas Raiders fired him in November after less than a season, knew athletic director Mark Jackson, though had never worked with him. And he found it easy enough to gather intel on Braun from people who worked with him and knew what he was about.
Then he connected with them.
“Getting a chance to have real good conversations about what their vision was for this program and kind of where they see it headed. And that intrigued me,” Kelly said. “And then I also know the type of student-athlete that you get to coach here. Kids who are really serious about everything that they do, if they decide to choose to come to Northwestern, whether it’s academically or athletically. That was something that I was intrigued with.”
Northwestern, which has touted its willingness to invest in its football program by pointing to the stadium, made it happen, and Kelly arrived in Evanston on Jan. 2, the day the transfer portal opened.
His first two weeks were spent on portal recruiting, and the coaches then hit the road for high school recruiting Jan. 15-31. They went around to the top prospects in Illinois first — Kelly’s photo popped up on social media a few times making the high school visits — and then branched out to see the other players Braun had offered.
Braun said upon announcing the hire that it would obviously have an impact on both types of recruiting, and he said Wednesday that Kelly’s presence has been “tremendous.”
The Wildcats’ most notable recruit commitment this offseason has been transfer quarterback Aidan Chiles, who threw for 4,116 yards and 27 touchdowns over three seasons at Oregon State and Michigan State.
“Ultimately, great football players that want to reach their fullest potential want to play and work with great coaches and great people, and we have a lot of that here at Northwestern,” Braun said. “But it was very evident with the hiring of Coach Kelly and other staff that came on board that now we have an opportunity to have conversations with young men that want to reach their fullest potential as a football player. They want to work with the best and the brightest, great people in the coaching space.”
The staff returned to Evanston on Saturday to resume work with current players, and Kelly is still in the getting-to-know-you process with them.
He has been studying film and watching them do strength and conditioning. But he said he won’t get a “real good beat” on what he has until spring ball in March.
He said he needs to figure out their strengths and weaknesses in order to build a system around them. He believes they have a lot of versatility among his coaches from different systems. Now they just need to determine what fits.
“Every year is slightly different, and it should always be built around your personnel,” Kelly said. “You could say, ‘We’re going to throw the ball every play,’ but if you don’t have anybody that’s really good at catching it, or anybody that’s really good at throwing it, probably shouldn’t be doing that, you know? So I think it’s really evaluating what your personnel is and putting them in the right positions where they have an opportunity to make plays. And I think that’s where the evolution comes in.”
Kelly also had a hand in building the new staff that includes new offensive line coach Tim Drevno, tight ends coach Bob Bicknell and quarterbacks coach Jerry Neuheisel, who came from eight seasons at UCLA. Kelly called Neuheisel “a rising star” in the coaching profession.
“I think he’ll be a head coach really shortly,” Kelly said. “He’s everything you’re looking for in a coach. He pours into his players. He’s got great knowledge in terms of his competency of the game itself. And he’s a great relationship guy.”
Braun has said a couple of times now how he hopes his leadership will benefit from working with Kelly.
The latter said his experiences with national title-contending teams have given him insight into how to get a team to peak at the right time, noting “some of those experiences will be applicable, hopefully sooner rather than later.”
“So excited for Chip to be leading our offense, but I’m also excited about all the conversations Chip and I are having about program development,” Braun said. “I’d be silly to sit up here and pretend like I have it all figured out as a head coach. You’re trying to surround yourself with the best and the brightest, and I know I have someone sitting to my left that has done an extremely high level in terms of coordinating offense but also as a head coach. I’m growing in that area, because he’s in the building with me. We’re growing together.”
