Mouth of Manchester has high-flying Ducks spreading their wings

Chip Kelly's voice is his offense's metronome.

"He talks fast," Kelly's boss Mike Bellotti said, "we play fast."

A big part of Dixon's success in Kelly's system is his ability to sell the fake. (US Presswire)

The only thing that has slowed down Kelly and Oregon's offense has been the calendar. The Ducks are off this week, their second bye this season. The nation can rest. Everything else has been a blur since Kelly, 43, said yes to Bellotti's offer to replace Gary Crowton as offensive coordinator, then sprinted across the country to make Dennis Dixon into a Heisman candidate and Oregon into a national championship contender.

Well, actually, Kelly drove. He's hyper but he's not that fast.

After 14 seasons at that college football hotbed New Hampshire, Kelly took his act across the country to find his perfect mate. Kelly and Dixon meshed from the beginning -- the perfect combination of execution and executioner. Kelly has drawn it up, Dixon has piled them up -- yards, that is -- for the most prolific offense on the West Coast (not counting Hawaii in the Pacific) which is No. 4 nationally in scoring and No. 5 in total offense.

"He helped us, maybe, take it to the next level," said Bellotti, Oregon's coach.

The next level includes calling plays "10 times faster than I talk," Kelly said. Part of that is the New Hampshire native's channeling of a New York cabbie most of the time. It's not intentional. It's just the way the man is. He won't shut up about much of anything.

On a certain cable network visiting Eugene last week: "The highlight of my weekend was when I got to say hi to Lee Corso in pregame."

On Dixon being compared to Vince Young: "I don't know if anybody can be compared to Vince Young."

On his native Manchester, N.H. where he played for the Wildcats: "It's a little slice of heaven. It's now turned into, obviously, the spread capital of the world. What is it they call Miami of Ohio, the Cradle of Coaches? Now it's Manchester, N.H. -- the Center of the Spread. I like that."

Tracking down patient zero in this spread offense revolution is pretty much futile. There are so many posers and quasi-geniuses that sometimes it's better to adopt football's Darwinian theory. The offense just evolved. Kelly is one of its latest masters. He is part of a New Hampshire mafia that includes Florida offensive coordinator Dan Mullen (born in Manchester) and Crowton (coached at New Hampshire from 1988-90), now with LSU.

But unlike other OCs around, Kelly's scheme is based a lot on him getting those plays in at the speed of sound.

So they can be run even faster.