‘Another coach on the field’: CCU welcomes back key cog who’s coming off knee surgery
When Silas Kelly was lost for the bulk of the season last year with a knee injury, it was as if Coastal Carolina lost both a player and a coach.
The vocal leader of the defense tore the ACL and meniscus in his left knee in the second game of the season against Kansas and missed the final 10 games of 2019.
So the return of the inside linebacker this year seemingly at full strength – if not even stronger and more agile – for his senior season gives the Chanticleers defense a lift in multiple ways.
“Silas is such a smart player it’s like having another coach on the field. It’s great to have him back,” said fellow senior linebacker Teddy Gallagher. “He’s one of those guys that’s really loud on the field so communication is always good on defense.”
Defensive coordinator Chad Staggs has been able to reunite the inside linebacker combo that he expected to rely upon last year in his first season in the position. In Kelly’s absence, Gallagher led the team in total tackles with 88, which ranked eighth in the Sun Belt Conference.
They’ll be stalwarts of the defense when Coastal opens the 2020 season at Kansas at 10 p.m. Saturday.
“He and Teddy are two of the smartest players that I have, that I’ve ever coached at linebacker,” Staggs said. “You could send him out with a practice schedule and feel like it would get done just as well as if you were there.”
A long recovery
The road back to health and the field had some speed bumps. Early in his rehabilitation, Kelly needed a second, less invasive surgery to repair the work done on the meniscus, which he said set him back a couple weeks from where he was in recovery.
“I was down at a lot of points. There’s a lot of ups and downs in ACL recovery,” Kelly said. “I had to have a second surgery too, and that was a major low point for me. I had been feeling good about my rehab and thought everything was going well, and we had to take a little step back. It just pushed me a little bit harder, I had to work a little bit harder to get back to where I was before I got hurt.
“I leaned on my teammates, I leaned on my family and they kind of helped get me through it. But at the end of the day I really had to take myself through it and get myself out of it and just work hard. It’s a tough process. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”
Kelly was forced to sit out spring practices in February and early March, so he made his return to the field with his teammates this fall.
“It’s very hard to describe how good it feels to be back,” he said. “Being away from the sport, not being able to play or participate in practice, really makes you appreciate what you have and just being able to come out here and play the sport that I’ve loved for so long. It nearly brought tears to my eyes the other day on the practice field because I was just so happy to be back out there.”
He missed spending more time with his teammates during workouts on campus this summer because both of his sisters got married, and when he returned from the weddings he had to go through COVID-19 testing and was held out of team activities until he produced a negative test.
At 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, Kelly has been timed at about 4.6 seconds in the 40-yard dash. He increased his upper body strength through workouts six days a week while he was unable to work on his left leg – he hit 375 pounds on the bench press – and eventually surpassed his previous lower body strength as well, hitting 435 on squats.
He worked out with weights provided by a roommate’s father at his residence during the height of coronavirus restrictions this spring when gyms were closed and he was unable to work with his trainers.
He said he is no longer limited physically at all. “My knee feels great,” he said. “If anything the more practice I get the better I feel. That’s kind of just a confidence thing. . . . Playing fast, playing towards my instincts and being able to make plays and cuts and everything I need to do on the field without hesitation, the extra practice has just made me more confident.”
Kelly was on the sideline during CCU’s games last year despite his injury, and was a constant in team meetings and around the practice field.
“Silas was around even when he was injured as a leader. . . . He’s always around,” Staggs said. “You can always feel his presence. It’s great to have him back on the field, but it’s like you didn’t miss him in some aspects of leadership, because he was still following a meeting or a player’s meeting and stuff like that for us.”
He was a team captain last year, and this year he was selected by his teammates to be on the team’s 11-player Unity Council, which was previously called the Leadership Council under former coach Joe Moglia.
Kelly has been a leader in initiatives off the field, as well. The Chanticleers collectively released a video calling for social and racial justice with the theme “Be The Change” two weeks ago, and Kelly was quick to get behind the idea.
An adopted younger brother, Asa, 20, from Guatemala is Kelly’s inspiration to be involved in social change.
“It hits close to home for me,” Kelly said. “He’s a huge source of motivation for me and I love him so much. He’s my little brother and we grew up together, been through a lot together. I’m going to fight for people who have less privilege than me and go through things I don’t have the opportunity to understand.”
Big year expected
After redshirting as a freshman, Kelly was third on the team in tackles with 75 as a redshirt freshman and was second with 60 tackles as a sophomore despite missing almost two full games due to an injury. He also had three tackles for loss in 2018 along with a fumble recovery and three pass breakups.
He’s part of an experienced and talented defense that just about everyone around the team believes is the best in school history and includes edge rushers Tarron Jackson and Jeffrey Gunter, who have both been selected First Team All-Sun Belt performers, and senior defensive lineman C.J. Brewer, a 2020 preseason second team selection.
“Without a doubt this is the most solid defense I’ve played on since I’ve been here,” Kelly said. “You can already tell the potential we have to really dominate this year. I feel really good about the guys we have on the defensive side, I feel we could be very, very good this year.”
Kelly’s thankful Coastal and the Sun Belt Conference opted to attempt to play a fall season despite the pandemic that caused other conferences such as the Big 10 and Pac-12 to postpone their seasons.
“All of us want to play football and that’s why we do all the things we do,” Kelly said. “It may be a little bit more difficult to make it happen this year than previous years, but to know that’s going to happen for us is really awesome, we’re really thankful for it.”
Kelly is leaning toward returning to Coastal for at least another season. Though this is his senior year, he still has two years of eligibility remaining because of his 2019 redshirt season due to his injury and the NCAA’s granting of another year of eligibility for all fall sports athletes because of the coronavirus.
“How this season goes will have an influence on that decision,” he said. “It’s always been a dream to go to the NFL, so personally that’s a goal for me.
“But other than that I just want to win. I want to win games with my team, I want to win a Sun Belt championship, I want to win the first bowl game for the school, just doing whatever we can to make that happen this year.”
Kelly is on pace to graduate in December with bachelor’s degrees in business management and exercise science and will be working toward an undergraduate degree in finance in the spring semester.
He remained at Coastal through the coaching change from Moglia to Jamey Chadwell in January 2019 when numerous players defected, and it was a coaching change that initially led him to the Conway school.
He was offered a scholarship by Maryland while at South Carroll High in Carroll County, Maryland and committed to play safety for the Terrapins. But early in his senior season in 2015 Maryland fired Randy Edsall and hired D.J. Durkin, and Kelly said Durkin called him and suggested he go to another school.
“That kind of [stunk] because Maryland was my dream school. I thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to me but it kind of turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me because I was able to open up my recruitment and Coastal reached out to me,” Kelly said. “. . . I came on a visit here and absolutely loved the program, loved the coaches, loved the guys I was on my visit with and reached out to on social media. It kind of just felt like family. I’ve been here since 2016 and have loved every minute of it.
“I’m just very fortunate and thankful for everything I’ve gotten to experience since I’ve been here.”
This story was originally published September 8, 2020 at 12:53 PM.
