It pretty much goes without saying that the San Francisco 49ers had the league's worst coaching staff last year. After being promoted from defensive line coach, Jim Tomsula was in way over his head as the leader of a team that finished with a 5-11 record.
Instead of letting this failed marriage linger any longer, the brass in San Francisco admitted its mistake. Now, after what was a disastrous 2015 campaign for himself, former Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly assumes the very same role in San Francisco.
What we are going to see on the field this upcoming summer in Santa Clara will be the complete antithesis of what fans for the last-place 49ers saw this past season.
While we have no idea whether Kelly's brand of football can equate to championships, we do know that his offenses have generally performed at a high level. Depending on how the personnel situation plays out during the offseason, we could be looking at a completely different 49ers offense.
Let's take a look at how Kelly's scheme might help San Francisco from a fantasy football perspective.
Philadelphia ran an average of 69 plays per game last season, a number that ranked No. 1 in the NFL. For comparison's sake, the 49ers ran an average of just 60 plays per game. That's a difference of 144 plays over the course of the year.
You don't need to be very good at math to understand what this means. By virtue of more opportunities, whoever is handling the rock in San Francisco should produce more fantasy points than we saw last season.
The interesting dynamic here is that we have absolutely no idea who that will be.
Colin Kaepernick, who seemed as good as gone just a couple short months ago, may very well be back with San Francisco next year. We know Kelly attempted to acquire him when he was with the Eagles. We also know Kaepernick fits the mold of quarterback that Kelly is looking for. That's only magnified by the presence of Marcus Mariota, among many other mobile signal callers, that suited up for Kelly in Eugene.
For all intents and purposes, Kaepernick's 2015 campaign was an absolute dumpster fire. He completed less than 60 percent of his passes, averaged just 179.4 passing yards per game and threw just six touchdowns in eight starts.
However, most of this can be thrown out the window. At least when it comes to fantasy football.
The Geep Chryst offense that San Francisco ran last season was about as unimaginative as any we have seen in the recent history of the NFL. The 49ers ranked dead least in scoring at under 15 points per game while finishing 31st in total offense. All said, San Francisco scored 10 points or less five times last season.
For comparison's sake, Eagles offense failed to reach the 11-point plateau just three times in Kelly's three seasons as the team's head coach.
Even during a down 2015 season, Philadelphia averaged nearly 10 points more per game than San Francisco.
We can point to superior talent on offense, but was that really the case? Sam Bradford was throwing to a receiver in Jordan Matthews who ranked in the top-three at his position in drops. A struggling DeMarco Murray teamed up with an injury-plagued Ryan Mathews to form the team's backfield.
Sure it had more talent than San Francisco's offense, but scheme definitely played a role in the differing level of success here.
Whether Kaepernick is actually under center when Week 1 comes calling. Well, that's a completely different question. San Francisco could go with Blaine Gabbert, who performed pretty darn well after he replaced Kaepernick this past season.
Heck, with the seventh pick in the draft, the 49ers could target one of the top-three quarterback prospects this upcoming spring.
Without a settled quarterback situation, we have no idea how the 49ers offense is going to look — at least from a passing game perspective.
What we do know is that Carlos Hyde will likely be the featured ball carrier. The former second-round pick was having himself a darn good year before going down with a foot injury in Week 7.
Hyde's down-hill running ability should be a perfect fit in the offense, as should Torrey Smith's ability to take the top off defenses. These are going to be two key cogs in Kelly's offense next season.
Outside of that, we are going to have to wait and see what happens with the personnel before drawing a final conclusion here.
What we can say is that whoever is under center (my money is on Kaepernick), he will likely be fantasy relevant. That's something a 49ers quarterback hasn't said in ages.