Offensively youthful
Kingsbury, LaFleur in the vanguard as NFL trends to young coaches emphasizing offense
Ten years ago, Kliff Kingsbury was a virtual volunteer coach, working “pro bono” with the University of Houston as an offensive quality control assistant.
About 5 miles away, that same entry-level position with the Texans was occupied by Matt LaFleur.
Today, Kingsbury and LaFleur, both 39 years old, are NFL head coaches. Whodath-unkit?
The January NFL coaching carousel doesn’t come close to playoff games, but it far more entertaining and fascinating than the preseason.
What makes it so fun is NFL owners have little clue about how to hire head coaches.
Oh, occasionally one gets it right, but the failure rate is extremely high.
Predictions that Kingsbury and LaFleur will not succeed as head coaches with the Cardinals and Packers, respectively, will most likely prove accurate in a few years.
At least LaFleur has NFL coaching experience, granted the first time he was put in complete charge of an offense was with this season’s Titans, who were 27th in scoring.
Many with better résumés will never get the kind of opportunity Kingsbury has garnered through a lot of luck and, undoubtedly, his good looks, as much as his hard work.
Give my man credit, though, for wowing in an interview that no one with his credentials could have expected would be granted. On paper, Kingsbury, who was recently fired from Texas Tech after posting a 35-40 record with a high of eight wins, is barely qualified to be an NFL offensive coordinator.
He could be a surprisingly good head coach. Make that shockingly good. Even great college coaches have struggled in the NFL. Kingsbury wasn’t a great college coach.
But ignore the last two decades of Cleveland Browns’ flops and Bill O’Brien’s weekly protestations, it is harder to win at Texas Tech than it is in the NFL.
The copycat league
The oft-repeated assertion that the NFL is a copycat league is an oversimplification of the dynamics of such a small fraternity, but it’s fitting.
Right now, NFL teams are enamored with young offensive minds. Six of the eight presumed new hires joining the NFL head coaching ranks have offensive backgrounds. (The Dolphins and Bengals can’t make their hires official because their reported choices are on playoff teams). Four of the eight are in their 30s.
This year’s hires indicate long-term experience, even play-calling experience isn’t required, as long as you are believed to have a good head for offense. That opened the door for Kingsbury.
Cardinals quarterback Josh Rosen is the same age Case Keenum was when Kingsbury helped him become a recordsetter at UH.
Kingsbury knows significantly more now than he did then. And much more than he did when he helped Johnny Manziel win the Heisman Trophy.
Looking at some of the hires and interviews, one would think somebody hacked into Sean McVay’s and Kyle Shanahan’s smart phones and shared their favorites list.s
The Rams’ and 49ers’ coaches are young, McVay is 32, Shanahan is 39, and creative. Add the Bears’ Matt Nagy, 40, to that list. In the NFL, lack of age and too much innovation used to be met with ridicule or contempt. Not anymore.
The under-40 crowd is winning. Big-time. Jobs, that is. Not titles. At least not yet.
In the last 20 years, just two coaches under 40 have won Super Bowls: Jon Gruden at 39 in the 2002 season and Mike Tomlin at 36 for the 2008 season. Kingsbury will be older than both should he win a Super Bowl.
The Cardinals wouldn’t mind that, but their immediate hope is for some McVay-type magic with Kingsbury.
After scoring an NFL-worst 224 points in 2016 under Jeff Fisher, Mr. Mediocrity himself, the Rams hired McVay and have scored more points than any team in the league the last two years.
Arizona was last in scoring with 225 points this season. Kingsbury’s teams will score points. In six seasons as the Tech head coach, his defense never finished higher than 87th in points allowed.
Former Texans secondary coach Vance Joseph, who was just let go after two years as Broncos head coach, will be the Cardinals’ defensive coordinator. Joseph spent three years with the Texans as an assistant under Wade Phillips, the Rams’ current coordinator.
McVay has one key advantage over Kingsbury. When McVay was hired by the Rams at the age of 30, he was the youngest head coach in modern league history. But he had worked eight years as an NFL assistant, including three as an offensive coordinator.
Kingsbury was on the field for two plays in his entire NFL career, and has never coached in the league.
Thoroughly seasoned
But he spent a full Super Bowl-winning season and two training camps with the Patriots, spent a season with the Saints when Mike McCarthy was the offensive coordinator, and played for a year under the late Mike Heimerdinger, a wellrespected offensive coach.
The son of a coach, Kingsbury once told me that his professional career, which included NFL Europe and the Canadian Football League, was “kind of like a Ph.D. for coaching.”
His college stints — playing quarterback for Mike Leach, coaching quarterbacks for Kevin Sumlin — offered an advanced degree in offensive football as well. None of that makes him ready for the NFL.
But it’s not his fault the NFL is ready for him.