Gase would have been the anti-Chip Kelly
Chip Kelly once called his offense a "See Coast" offense, partly in jest to counter the labels that had been attached to his scheme and partly to explain that the system had many facets.
Chip Kelly once called his offense a "See Coast" offense, partly in jest to counter the labels that had been attached to his scheme and partly to explain that the system had many facets.
"Here's our offense. We run the 'See Coast offense,' " Kelly said during his first season with the Eagles. "If we see something, OK, and we like it, and we think it fits, we're going to run it."
Some of the best offensive minds cater their scheme to the skill set of their players and to counter defenses on a weekly basis. That is in essence what Kelly meant by "See Coast." But there are also coaches who have their systems and generally stick to them as they go about finding talent to match.
Kelly ended up being more of the latter. His offense changed with each quarterback, in particular the passing game, but he never abandoned tempo as the foundation. There were games when he effectively altered his scheme to take advantage of a defense, but there were more examples of Kelly's sticking to his base plays, all in the name of keeping his foot on the gas.
Ultimately, the Eagles were more a "Me Coast" than a "See Coast" offense under Kelly.
Which brings us to Adam Gase, who became the Dolphins' head coach Saturday after interviewing with the Eagles earlier in the week. It was unclear as of Saturday evening how interested the Eagles were in the 37-year-old former Bears offensive coordinator.
They interviewed Gase first on Tuesday and presumably would have had dibs on meeting with him for a second time. But after he met with the Browns, Dolphins, and Giants over the next three days, he returned to Miami and signed a five-year contract to become the first hire of the offseason.
The Eagles are scheduled to interview Chiefs offensive coordinator Doug Pederson on Sunday, followed by former Giants coach Tom Coughlin on Monday.
Whether the Eagles were seriously in competition for Gase or not, they will forever be linked to him. He appeared to check off many of the attributes owner Jeffrey Lurie said he was looking for in the man to replace Kelly.
But how did Gase, who has never been a head coach at any level, become the hot NFL commodity after only three years as a coordinator? The answer can be partly found in Kelly's "See Coast" comment.
In 11 years as an NFL assistant, Gase has seen and worked in various systems and he's cribbed ideas from each to develop an offense that is adaptable. It's an ever-shifting paradigm whose base function is to cater to the quarterback and the players he's been handed.
The concept also apparently applies to Gase's personality. His players describe him as flexible but not to the point that he is a pushover. They say he is personable. He related to everyone on the Bears even though he primarily worked with the offense.
"He goes up and talks to everyone on the team," Bears defensive lineman Mitch Unrein told the Chicago Sun-Times recently. "You need that as a head coach. You need that ability to have the respect of the players, but also have that close-knit team where somebody doesn't feel where you're too big where they can't come and talk to you."
Much of Gase's offense comes from mentors Josh McDaniels, Mike Martz, and Steve Mariucci. But he also seems to have learned a lot from John Fox - whom he has worked under for the last five years - as it pertains to dealing with people as a leader.
Asked last week about his head coaching credentials, Gase gave an answer that might have seemed packaged for the Eagles to hear after the firing of the socially awkward Kelly.
"One of the things that you always know is that it's a people business," Gase told the Chicago Sun-Times. "It's about the players. It's about the people around the building."
Mostly, it's about the players, especially as it relates to Gase's offense. He hasn't had as much time to become dogmatic about a particular scheme, but when he's been responsible for devising plays, Gase has had personnel first in mind.
As quarterbacks coach in Denver, he was credited with pulling some plays from the Florida offense that Tim Tebow had comfort running. The same theory applied to Peyton Manning when Gase became the Broncos coordinator in 2013. They delved deep into the quarterback's old playbook with the Colts as they remade the offense.
And in one season with Jay Cutler, Gase managed to help cut down on the quarterback's turnover tendencies. The 32-year-old finished with the best passer rating (92.3) and the lowest interception rate (2.3) of his career.
The Bears offense, overall, was just mediocre. Chicago finished 21st in yards and yards per play and 23d in points. But the Bears were shorthanded at receiver and tight end for most of the season.
It's one thing to call plays for a future Hall of Famer such as Manning, but it's another to help resurrect Cutler's moribund career. And Gase dug deep into his bag of tricks.
He spent three of his formative coaching years working with Martz, who authored the Greatest Show on Turf with the Rams and based many of his passing principles on Air Coryell. But Gase's offense has other elements.
There were the West Coast route concepts and spacing he learned from Mariucci. There were the formation shifts and motions that Manning likes to use for pre-snap reads. And there were changes in tempo that McDaniels, the Broncos head coach in 2009 and 2010, likes to use.
Gase even had Cutler run the zone-read from time to time.
He has said that of all the coaches he has worked under, McDaniels, now the Patriots' offensive coordinator, has been the most influential. Asked last month what he admired most about Patriots coach Bill Belichick, Kelly said it was his ability to win in various ways.
It was also a compliment to McDaniels, who has spent most of his career with Belichick, and his adaptability. Kelly was never as flexible. The Eagles seem to be searching for the anti-Kelly. Gase would have applied.
