little RPO. It's really hard to even call it the spread because it's very predictable and still mostly up the middle / off center.
Kelly's downfall on O is he doesn't get the ball in playmaker's hands and it seems even with various offensive coordinators they pre-select on a weekly basis who they are going to feed the ball come hell or high water. While it sounds good in theory, doing this leaves no room to take what the defense gives you, and over the last decade, this strategy has more often than not left ND very one-dimensional on the offensive side of the ball.
Kelly is just not as creative on offense as he was hyped to be, and his model is stuck in the past. Saban was the same way but changed just after the true spread took over. He has continued to dominated CFB by CHANGING with the game, not telling the game to F'off this is how I'm going to do it... a'la the Brian Kelly way. 10 wins a year and just almost... that is good for modern day ND, but definitely not good enough to win the damn thing in today's game. If you can't score at will you can't win in today's college game. Just facts. Doesn't matter how much wishful thinking you put on D or running the ball. The goal is to put it in the endzone and today that means getting your talent the ball in space and letting them play. Kelly is way to technical for this level of football when it comes to that. There is no "right" way to play the game in CFB. Take ball, put it in endzone... score points... win.
QBs matter but in college not so much. You need an athlete that can run and be accurate more often than not. Hence OSU success will not putting out a QB worth a dang. Kelly isn't paid to put QBs in the NFL. He's paid to win college football games and NCs. That requires a QB that can play the game on the CFB level, not the NFL level. See Auburn under Nick Marshall when they went to the NC game. Terrible QB, converted safety but he ran Malzhan's offense extremely well and Malzhan runs more of an Oregon-style spread which is predicated on run first, at least in their hayday under Chip Kellly.