With the Las Vegas Raiders firing offensive coordinator Chip Kelly before the season is even finished, San Francisco 49ers fans can only look from afar and laugh at the former coach's disastrous return to the NFL.
Prior to this season, Kelly's last taste of the NFL came during the 2016 season which was his lone season as the head coach of the Niners. San Francisco went 2-14 in a year that was remembered more for quarterback Colin Kaepernick's activism than it was the forgettable product on the field.
After Kelly's brutal lone season in San Francisco, he was fired and the 49ers replaced him with head coach Kyle Shanahan, which turned out to be a tremendous decision as Shanahan, along with general manager John Lynch, have overseen a return to winning for the franchise as they have done everything except win a sixth Super Bowl.
Meanwhile, Kelly returned to the college ranks where he made a name for himself initially, gaining respect as the head coach at the University of Oregon before he was hired as the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, where he had some initial success before flaming out there and then joining the Niners.
Kelly was hired as the head coach at UCLA a few years after he was let go by the Niners and had a supremely average tenure with the Bruins. His coaching record was 35-34 and he only won one bowl game.
However, he got an opportunity to be the offensive coordinator at Ohio State, and in his lone season with the Buckeyes under head coach Ryan Day, Ohio State won a national championship.
That gained him enough positive press that Pete Carroll, the former head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, was able to hire Kelly as his offensive coordinator after getting the head coaching job of the Raiders.
This ended up being a pretty terrible mistake as the Carroll-Kelly connection in Las Vegas has been nothing short of a dumpster fire. Las Vegas ranks as one of the worst offensive teams in the NFL, and there was reported dysfunction between Kelly and the team.
It would not be a huge shock if the Raiders decided to blow things up yet again and moved on from Carroll this offseason as well.
It is a nice situation for Niners fans, though, as they get to see two reviled coaches completely tank a franchise that is a historic rival of the 49ers, while San Francisco sits at 8-4 with a solid shot to make the playoffs.