DN Agenda: Will Chip Kelly win a Super Bowl in San Francisco?

It's an interesting question, because Chip Kelly might have sold himself to the 49ers as the guy whose system can turn Colin Kaepernick around, and maybe it can.

If you get the quarterbacking part right, the rest usually follows. However, the post-Jim Harbaugh 49ers are widely considered one of the NFL's most dysfunctional franchises. Their roster is in tatters.

Supposedly, Kelly just wants to coach now and won't be involved in personnel decisions (or at least, that's what he told the York family to get in the door). General manager Trent Baalke, the guy who won the power struggle with Harbaugh, doesn't seem to be the best talent evaluator around.

Nobody on the roster scored more than four touchdowns in 2015. Featured back Carlos Hyde ended the season on IR with a foot injury.

Ultimately, I suppose the answer depends on whether you thought Kelly's repetitive up-tempo system could have worked, with the right personnel. Also, whether you thought Kelly's problems relating to players and coworkers were something to be shrugged off, or were a crippling defect.

I was expecting we'd have another year here with Kelly to perhaps resolve those questions. I think Chip's a smart guy with some interesting ideas. It really gave me pause that he insisted on getting rid of players he thought didn't fit what he wanted to do, then often ended up with guys who were worse fits. I'm not sure what that says about Kelly, but I know it doesn't say anything good.

So, I'm coming down on the side of "no." For a couple years, I thought that with the right quarterback, Chip would win a Super Bowl here. Guess I was wrong. At any rate, we'll never know. But 2015 was such an alarming season, on so many levels. Maybe more important, under current ownership and management, the 49ers don't impress me as the kind of strong, stable franchise that tends to win Super Bowls.

If Kelly somehow does win a Lombardi with the 49ers, that probably means Jeffrey Lurie doesn't have a clue about what's important in a coach, and will never, ever get it right. Scary thought for Eagles fans.

I'm going to go with a no here for a couple of reasons.

The first is, he's not in Kansas, er, the NFC East anymore. He's in the same division with Pete Carroll's Seahawks and Bruce Arians' Cardinals, which means that for at least a couple more years, he's going to be taking a Swiss army knife to a gun fight.

In case you didn't notice, the 49ers aren't very good. They were outscored 387-238 this season. Their 11 losses were by an average of 16.4 points.

They finished dead last in the league in scoring this season, putting up more than 20 points three times all year. They were 31st in third-down efficiency and 32nd in sacks allowed per pass play.

Their defense gave up 20 rushing touchdowns, had just nine interceptions and allowed opponents to complete 68.3 percent of their passes.

Talentwise, the 49ers make the 4-12 team Chip Kelly inherited from Andy Reid three years ago look like the 1972 Dolphins.

Even if general manager Trent Baalke pushes most of the right buttons, and that's a very big if, it's going to take a while for him to build back the Niners' roster to the level it was in 2012 when they went to the Super Bowl under Jim Harbaugh.

In Colin Kaepernick, Kelly has the zone-read quarterback that he has spent the last three years insisting he doesn't really need.

So we'll see how that goes. While Kaepernick is one of the league's best running quarterbacks and has a gun for an arm, he's thrown just 56 touchdown passes in 47 starts to go with a 59.9 career completion percentage. So Chip has a lot of work ahead of him.

Kelly's up-tempo offense took the NFL by storm in 2013. But the league's defensive coordinators aren't idiots. Or at least most of them aren't. They studied the hell out of Chip's offense and got better at defending it. From 2013 through 2015, just about every Eagles offensive number progressively shrunk.

Now, some of that obviously had to do with talent. But like I said, the 49ers are pretty bad.

They're a clown-car organization. Jed York is a rich kid who has no idea what he's doing. He let Harbaugh leave and fired Kelly's predecessor, Jim Tomsula, after just one season. If they go 5-11 again, Baalke probably will be joining him in the unemployment line, and then we can watch Kelly play GM again.

Whether Chip Kelly can win a Super Bowl in San Francisco boils down to this:

How much can a man - whose rapid ascension from Division 1-AA college assistant to NFL head coach traced to an innovative approach to the game - adjust and change that approach at this level?

Remember, the question is not whether Kelly can achieve the career longevity of a Lovie Smith or Jeff Fisher or even Andy Reid. I believe he will adjust enough to do just that. The question, though, is whether he and his approach can prosper within the confines and constrictions of this league - whether it be roster size, salary-cap issues, owners and general managers who are more empowered and headstrong than even the most influential college athletic directors, or the adult-to-adult relationships with players that are paramount at this level.

Kelly failed here mostly because he was miserably bad at roster building and team chemistry. His best season was that first one, when a roster full of Reid's players - many of whom were banged up the season before - remained incredibly healthy. That included all five of his offensive linemen.

Many of us then credited his sports science methods and not luck. We were wrong, of course, as the ensuing two seasons proved. We were also wrong to believe that Kelly's culture trumped talent. His downfall is not traced simply to dumping existing talent. It was how he replaced it, or didn't, and the most glaring example of that was not in the skill positions, but on that offensive line.

The Eagles had the 12th most yards gained in the NFL last season and were 13th in points scored, and their 109 passing plays of 25 or more yards ranked fourth. Their 175 running plays of 10 yards or more was second in the league. But Allen Barbre, Matt Tobin and Dennis Kelly were no reason to ignore offensive lineman in the draft, even after you admittedly miscalculated about who and how many would be left when it was your chance to pick. Especially when you knew already that Jason Peters was getting long in the tooth, when there was ample evidence that the sum of Jason Kelce and Evan Mathis was far greater than their separate parts.

The result was a maddening array of penalties at the point of attack - holding, clipping, hands-to-the-face, illegal motion - that contributed more to three-and-outs than any poor throw, dropped pass, or running play that was started five yards from scrimmage.

There's also this: Kelly has never rebuilt anything. He took over a successful program at Oregon, he used healthy versions of Andy-Reid-picked players in his first season here. At both Oregon and New Hampshire, his favored teams faltered in championship games. For that narrative to change, much of what led to his ascension will have to change too.

I don't see it happening. Then again, I didn't see this coming either.

San Francisco's ceiling depends on the personnel department's ability to identify and draft talent over the next three years, though I'd expect to see immediate improvement on the offensive side of the ball, where the Niners scored 37 fewer points than the next closest team, finishing with a paltry 238 on 4,860 yards (second-worst ahead of only the Rams).

While Kelly's offense finished below average in most categories this season, two of his greatest strengths happen to coincide with two of the 49ers greatest weaknesses under Jim Tomsula. The offensive line was decimated by the departures of tackle Anthony Davis and guard Mike Iupati, who, along with the also-departed Jonathan Goodwin, started all three of their NFC Championship seasons from 2011-13.

Yet the unit did not play as bad as its league-worst sack percentage (9.2 percent of attempts) might indicate. One of the reasons Colin Kaepernick found himself on the bench was his habit of holding the ball far too long.

In his three years with the Eagles, Kelly demonstrated a keen feel for route combinations and read progressions that helped his QBs get the ball out quickly at an efficient rate. Nick Foles, Mark Sanchez and Sam Bradford all experienced significant improvement under Kelly's watch, and it's reasonable to believe that he will prove to be a huge upgrade over the previous direction provided to whoever starts the season under center.

If that starter is Kaepernick, Kelly will have a durable, mobile quarterback capable of running some of the read-option concepts we saw Carolina and even Kansas City deploy with much success in this weekend's games. At the same time, a return to his 2011-13 production is not a given. While he is stronger, faster and more athletic than any quarterback Kelly has had, he will arguably be the least refined of them as a passer. Contrary to popular belief, Kelly's offense demands accuracy and quick decision-making more than it does an ability to scramble.

And let's not forget: Jim Harbaugh's three straight NFC Championship berths were built largely on the back of a suffocating defense that allowed 229, 273 and 272 points in the 2011-13 seasons. To put that in perspective, the Seahawks led the league in points allowed this season with 277.

The retirement of elite linebacker Patrick Willis was a huge blow, as were the departures of dependable cogs like defensive lineman Justin Smith, strong safety Donte Whitner and starting corners Carlos Rogers and Tarell Brown.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the 49ers return to 9-7 or 10-6 level competitiveness in Kelly's first season. Where they go from there depends on the personnel they add and Kelly's ability to create a defensive scheme that works.

Ed Barkowitz: No

Les Bowen: No

Bob Cooney: No

Doug Darroch: No

Sam Donnellon: No

Paul Domowitch: No

Jim DeStefano: No

Marcus Hayes: No

Adam Herman: No

Rich Hofmann: Yes

Dick Jerardi: No

Mike Kern: No

Tom Mahon: No

Drew McQuade: No

Dave Murphy: No

John Smallwood: No

Bob Vetrone: No

Debbie Woodell: No