Chad Kelly may crash NFL Scouting Combine after invitation was rescinded
Chad Kelly is still planning on attending the NFL Scouting Combine despite the league rescinding its invitation to the former Ole Miss quarterback.
Former Ole Miss Rebels quarterback Chad Kelly was invited to the NFL Scouting Combine which begins later this month. However, the agents for Kelly said the invitation was rescinded without an explanation despite repeated efforts to find an answer.
The NFL is in the second year of barring college football players from attending the Combine if they have felony or misdemeanor convictions for weapons, sexual assault or domestic violence. It also bars players who aren’t willing to subject themselves to a background check.
Kelly doesn’t have any convictions for those offenses but he was charged with resisting arrest, menacing and other offenses stemming from a 2014 incident at a Buffalo nightclub. Kelly’s lawyers allege Troy Vincent, NFL VP of football operations, didn’t get all the facts and he and the NFL are unfairly making Kelly an example.
Regardless of the ruling and the “unvitation” Kelly received, the Ole Miss quarterback is considering crashing the party in Indianapolis anyway.
“We have an official invite to come to the combine; we got a flight booked,” one of Kelly’s representatives, Vance McAllister, told “The Tim Graham Show” on 1270 The Fan in Buffalo, New York, via ESPN. “He has a jersey number there waiting on him, and until we get a written disinvite — or whatever you want to call it — from the league, we’ll be in Indy. We’ll show up, and they’ll have to tell Chad ‘no’ then, because they’re obviously not willing to put it in writing to tell Chad ‘no’ now.”
This whole situation is messy and complicated than it ever needed to be. Kelly is owed a simple explanation about why he won’t get a chance to interview and meet with the NFL teams who will determine his professional football career. It’s a simple courtesy, especially when you consider the league extended an invite before yanking it away.
I would be upset if I was Kelly and in Kelly’s camp because it takes away an opportunity for a prospect to interview with the teams and explain and off-the-field incidents they want to ask him about. Kelly is recovering from a torn ACL that ended his final season at Ole Miss so he wasn’t going to throw or workout, but teams in need of a quarterback would have loved the chance to interview them. And I think those teams will want an answer from the league and Troy Vincent as well.
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Hopefully, Kelly gets his chance if he’s entitled to it and there isn’t some unreported secret conviction we don’t know about. Otherwise, this seems like an unfair witch hunt against Kelly.