EVANSTON, Ill. — Against the window seal of David Braun’s office conference room at Northwestern, a bronze statue of a man glares toward visitors.

An award Braun won in 2023, the miniature depiction of Bear Bryant, dressed in his trademark suit and a houndstooth hat, is fitting considering the program’s upward trajectory and that his offense, under new coordinator Chip Kelly, is showing flashes of yesteryear: the Wing-T, Wishbone and option concepts that Bryant used to claim six national championships at Alabama more than four decades ago.

“You can call them dated. That’s not fair,” Braun says with a smile. “But creative!”

Life is good here in this northern Chicago suburb.

The 6-1 and 18th-ranked Wildcats are off to their best start since 2012; the fall foliage sweeps across this campus like a painter’s brush; the university alignment and athletic investment is as its best since before the tumult around the clumsy handling of the end of the Pat Fitzgerald era; the program opened a more than $850 million new stadium earlier this season; and the offense is an entertaining throwback under one of the sport’s most heralded gurus.

On an unseasonably warm Thursday from the school’s shimmering football facility, Kelly gnashes on breadsticks as a laminated sheet of offensive schemes protrudes from his backpocket. Two days from now he returns to Eugene for Northwestern’s game against a reeling Oregon team.

He audibly shrugs. He’s returned to Oregon before, both as UCLA’s head coach and as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator in 2024. In fact, Kelly is 0-4 against the Ducks.

“They’re a really good football team. They’re really talented,” he said. “Turn the tape on and you stop thinking about being nostalgic.”

In his first season back in college after an 11-game stint coordinating the Raiders offense, Kelly has infused some of his old tricks into the Wildcats. He’s embracing formations, schemes and concepts that he says he hasn’t used since his days as offensive coordinator at New Hampshire — more than 20 years ago.

Upon an evaluation of the Northwestern roster during the offseason, Kelly arrived at a decision based on the talent before him: It’s time to take it old school.

He had a 6-foot-4, 225-pound quarterback with wide receiver speed (Michigan State transfer Aiden Chiles) and a bevy of running backs in what is the team’s deepest position.

He dusted off his proverbial binders from his days at FCS New Hampshire: the Wing-T formation, Wishbone schemes and military academy option plays.

Braun, a former defensive coordinator who hired Kelly in December, recalls watching Northwestern’s offense practice this offseason and, at times, thinking, “What are we doing?”

And then the games got going and, well, kaboom.

The result is a ground-and-pound rushing attack (204 yards a game) that’s helped the program to its best offensive output since 2005 (34.7 points a game through the first seven games). Chiles has at least one rushing touchdown in every game, has thrown for 12 more scores and completes a conference-best 71.3 percent of his passes. The running backs are averaging well over 5 yards a carry and the unit has scored at least 34 points in five of seven games.

“Where we had struggled the last few years was teams would load the box, man you up on the perimeter, your wide receiver talent isn’t up to snuff and you start banging your head against the wall,” Braun says. “Even if [the Wing-T and option] is only 30% of the offense, there’s a trickle down. Having that curveball makes your base offense — your fastball — so much better.”

Kelly estimates that he operates less than 20% of his offense out of the Wing-T — a three-running back, two-tight end formation that dates back to the 1800s. However, those are the plays that make the “highlights,” he says, “and that’s what people like — the 10-second clips.”

There’s plenty of traditional offensive football in Kelly’s repertoire.

“Chip Kelly is a football savant,” former Ohio State and Florida coach Urban Meyer said recently on a Big Ten Network spot. “I’m convinced he could coach Wishbone, Wing-T, spread, I [formation], West Coast offense.”

As it turns out, he’s doing all or most of it now.

“It's almost like you're playing three different offenses," Oregon coach Dan Lanning said earlier this week.

But Northwestern’s success stretches well beyond creative offensive football.

There’s sort of a “perfect storm” happening in Evanston, says Gerry DiNardo, the former LSU and Indiana coach and current Big Ten Network analyst.

Yes, there’s marrying Kelly's innovative scheme with a veteran quarterback in Chiles. But the university’s investment in athletics has never been greater: The glittering new stadium opened earlier this year to a rocking environment in a blowout win over Penn State; the school received a $35 million gift this summer from the Uihlein family meant for roster retention and acquisition; and the university admissions process, with encouragement from third-year athletic director Mark Jackson, is showing some much-needed flexibility in this evolving recruiting landscape of college athletics.

From his office Thursday, Jackson, a long-time USC football administrator who knows the value of the sport, believes this to be the beginning of something truly special here: a top-10 academic institution with a top-20 football program, multi-million dollar new facilities, an inspiring offensive approach, steady defense and a locally raised head coach who’s grown into a more CEO-style role needed in this era.

“We’ve got all the right ingredients. We’ve just got to make it sustainable,” says Jackson. “Football success is important to our positioning in the Big Ten and our positioning with what’s coming and where we sit at the table when the television deals come open.”

It’s a telling line from a man who’s been around the industry enough to know what’s coming: programs that want to remain viable in this football juggernaut of a conference must excel at the sport of football.

Two years ago, in an interview with Yahoo Sports, Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson whispered something similar.

As media giants shift more of their revenues toward successful football programs and as conferences further reward their members with football-related initiatives, those not excelling, or investing, in the sport operate in fear of the ramifications. Washington State president Kirk Schulz, his school quite literally left behind in the Pac-12, describes it as a “curing of conferences,” a concept that many within the industry expect to continue: bigger brands leaving behind their little brothers as the industry evolves.

“In the Big Ten, you need to be relevant in football to be a relevant member in your conference,” Dolson told Yahoo Sports in 2024. “We don't take for granted that we’re always a long-standing member of the Big Ten. We want to pay our fair share and be a valued member in football.”

Indiana serves as a “powerful example” of how football success can change the brand and stature of a university, says Jackson. “Where they sit at the table right now, they have leverage and success. It’s a different Indiana. We hope to be in that same position three years from now.”

This season feels like a leap toward that. And the Wildcats are doing it without the $30-plus million football roster budget that so many of their colleagues possess.

“For so long there’s been this sense of pride of ‘We’re going to do more with less,’” Braun says. “That narrative needs to change. ‘We’re going to do more with enough.’ We don’t need to have the most. There’s a lot of people in college football that are literally burning money.”

Braun prides himself in keeping players. The program retained 28 of 31 players last year who played significant snaps and 87% of overall snaps returned this year. But retainment doesn’t mean paying gobs of cash.

Braun and general manager Christian Sarkisian believe that while other programs overpay athletes based on “potential,” Northwestern pays on “production.”

A key acquisition this offseason wasn’t on the roster but on the staff.

Last fall, as Northwestern limped to another poor offensive showing, Braun studied the history of the unit here. Over the last six years, the offense hasn’t finished inside the top 90 in FBS. He approached Jackson.

“We need to make a transformational change,” he told him. “Can we find the backing to do this because the [staff] salary pool in my contract…”

“For the right person, we’ll make it work,” Jackson said.

Enter Chip Kelly, the Wing-T, Wishbone and the old-school option.

Is Northwestern here to stay? Perhaps the next few weeks will reveal the answers. The Wildcats have games against Oregon, Iowa, Ohio State, Minnesota and Illinois.

“We want to get into the College Football Playoff and compete for a national championship,” Jackson said. “We think this season is an indication of that. But there’s a lot coming up — the meat of our schedule.”