The Kliff Conundrum
What would success for Kingsbury in Washington say about his time in Arizona?
Week 18, January 8th 2023. Cardinals at 49ers. Second play from scrimmage. David Blough takes the snap, pitches the ball out to Pharoh Cooper, who returns it to Blough, who heaves it 50 yards down the sideline. Somehow AJ Green comes down with it. He pushes off one defender, stumbles over a tackle and hobbles at a scintillating snail’s pace into the endzone for a miraculous touchdown.
The Cardinals lose 38-13.
David Blough, Pharoh Cooper, AJ Green, fun trick play, loss. The Cardinals’ 2022 season in a nutshell. Kliff Kingsbury was fired the next day. It was done. A season of true heart-wrenching-gut-breaking-agonising-slow-burning-misery that was over before it began and then went downhill from there.
There were very few protestations both in Arizona and around the league regarding the firing of Kliff. In fact, it may have been the first time since well before he was hired that the league in general seemed to agree with the Cardinals decision making. He cast a beleaguered and broken shadow, a pale imitation of the young (supposed) whizz-kid hired back in 2019. But now he’s back. A point to prove. A new offense of his own to run. Despite everything that happened in that final Cardinals season of his reign, the Commanders decided he was worth a shot. And what if he’s really good?
Until that torrid final year, the Cardinals under Kliff Kingsbury were neither as good nor as bad as you remember. Win totals of 5-11 & 8-8 showed a team in development in years 1 & 2, and the 10-2 start in year 3 tricked us all into believing we were contenders. Led by his fun and explosive air raid scheme, the Cardinals offense under Kliff was driving the team forward to the promised land of perennial play-off participation. Except it wasn’t. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see very clearly that even during the highest of highs of the 2021 season and that unbeaten start to the year, Kliff’s offensive scheme was far from the most important factor at play. I’m not denigrating the man’s ability to draw up innovative plays, he can certainly do this in both the run and passing game. But it was the stellar showing from Vance Joseph’s defense coupled with the 3rd & 4th down magic of Kyler Murray that really drove the Cardinals in that singular run to the playoffs under Kingsbury. During that 10-2 start in 2021, by EPA (expected points added) the Cardinals ranked second, yes second in the league in defense. During the same stretch, they were 11th in offense on 1st & 2nd downs and 1st in offense on 3rd & 4th downs. This tells the story of a team winning through it’s defense with an offensive system that was driven by the drive extending magic and wizardry of Kyler Murray. But it’s not the only story we can tell.
The laziest label we can apply to Kliff is that he’s an air-raid coach. He may have entered the league this way, but he sure as hell isn’t leaving it solely as such. Kliff’s adaptation of his scheme throughout his initial years in the NFL sparked a revelation that this ‘air-raid’ coach was actually an inspired run-game designer. Remember, this is a man who once called a game in which Patrick Mahomes threw 88 times for 749 yards at Texas Tech. And yet the Cardinals ranked 3rd, 6th and 10th by Rush EPA through his first 3 years, a very lovely rushing offense. Yes, there were times these figures were elevated by Kyler’s legs on 3rd down, but not all of his (819!) rushing yards in 2020 came this way and it still took a coach who was willing to adapt to take advantage of this. In that 10-2 run to start 2021, when Kyler was stuck on the sideline for 3 games, Kliff changed the offense completely for Colt McCoy, whose ADOT (average depth of target) of 5.3 yds ranked 39th out of all 39 QBs with at least 100 snaps that year and was multiple orders lower than Kylers’ 8.2 yards. The Cards won 2 of those 3 games, against well regarded opponents.
However, we can’t have a conversation about Kliff’s adaptability without reference to his career-long history of starting a season well and then withering down the stretch. You don’t need me to tell you the numbers, we’ve all seen them. They’re bad. Not olympic swimmer slowing down in the final 25m bad, more like olympic swimmer drowning during the final lap bad. Not so much the final leg of the relay race dropping the baton, more like choking on it. Can we blame these stretches on injuries? Sure. A more taxing strength of schedule? Possibly. Other factors we can’t possibly know? Quite likely. A head coach whose scheme is gradually found out and solved by defenses throughout the year not being able to correctly adjust on the fly leading to losses and de-motivation that he doesn’t have the leadership or people skills to arrest? Seems probable.
Why does any of this matter now? We’ve moved on, he’s moved on. Well, it’s to say that I think there’s a very strong chance that Kliff succeeds in Washington. Sort of. And if he does there will be some unavoidable questions about his time in Arizona. He’ll most likely be working with another stupidly talented young quarterback - in either Caleb Williams, Drake Maye or Jayden Daniels - he might well be just adaptable enough to build a scheme for each of them (at least initially), and he won’t be getting saddled with expensive, past-their-prime veterans, first-round middle linebackers and Andy Isabella, courtesy of Steve Keim. But far and away most importantly, the crux of it all, the thing we cannot forget is this. Washington’s new head Coach, Dan Quinn, will be tasked with building the organisational culture, not Kliff.
The NFL is full of, to put it politely, difficult, characters. Before 2023, Kyler Murray may well have been one of them. It may have been a tough group of players to work with in that Cardinals locker room in general. But the sheer volume of critical comments about the culture crashing from the lips of Cardinals players in the wake of Kliff’s firing was alarming. In many cases, they seemed shocked by the competence of the new regime. Shocked that they weren’t allowed to eat breakfast during meetings anymore, shocked that they were now expected them to be on time and accountable to their teammates. I’m prepared to admit that there could be many reasons for these comments, but it certainly pours cold-water on any claim that Kingsbury was any sort of leader capable of moulding a team into his vision. You’d certainly hope this wasn’t his vision of a winning culture. Under Jonathon Gannon in 2023, the Cardinals looked more resilient down the stretch than at any point under Kliff Kingsbury and the messaging from the team from the tippity-top to the bippity bottom spoke of an accountable, together, motivated group. This might just be a honeymoon period, sure. The classic new coach bump dragging this football team out from the abyss. But we were in there alright, and some of that blame has to fall on Kliff.
But it also must fall on the Cardinals in general. Kingsbury was working within an organisation that has been loaded with allegations of misconduct by ownership and upper-management. The NFLPA surveys of players show just how dreadful they feel about the Cardinals treatment of them. Not to mention the farcical nature of the Kyler Murray extension and the media storm that came with it. Regardless of the veracity of any of this, the Cardinals facility does not seem to have been a fun place to be. It’s unfair to think that Kliff could have overcame this all on his own, but he could have done more in spite of it all. Just look at how Gannon has insulated his players from the myriad of allegations appearing this past year. The all-conquering Kansas City Chiefs rank even lower than the Cardinals on those surveys. Kliff wasn’t dealt the easiest hand. But we weren’t asking for perfection. For the best. Better was possible.
He’s probably nicely rested after his year away from the bright lights of the NFL. People change and develop. He’s most likely motivated to do better this time. He’ll have plenty of tools on offense to do it with. He could be very successful as the offensive coordinator of the Commanders. But it’s a different skillset. A different context. Leading Caleb Williams to a good rookie year and career beyond doesn’t mean that Kliff would ever have worked as the head coach in Arizona. Let’s not get that twisted.
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Article preview image from the Washington Commanders.