Kingsbury's NFL success makes Riley even more attractive

Texas Tech fired Kliff Kingsbury in November, the Arizona Cardinals hired him in January, and I joined the band of critics who blistered the hiring.

Hire a head coach who was 35-40 in six Lubbock seasons?

Hire a head coach who was 5-13 against the Big 12's States (OSU, KSU, Iowa State) to compete against the Rams, Seahawks and 49ers?

Absurd.

And Sean Payton thought so, too.

The Saints head coach questioned the wisdom of

NFL franchises chasing some offensive savant who had scant profootball experience.

“I think we've got a diversity problem,” Payton told the NFL Network in March. “What took place, that's hitting us (experienced coaches) square in the face.” Payton later said he was “excited to play those teams” that had hired offensive gurus.

Sunday in New Orleans, the Saints get their chance. They host the Cardinals. And while the Saints likely will roll, it's because Payton has a great team, not because the Cardinals are a mess. Under Kingsbury, a team with a depleted roster, a rookie quarterback and always-squishy ownership suddenly is 3-3-1. Many season projections had the Cardinals winning no more than three games all season.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but no way can this be good for Oklahoma football, hoping to keep Lincoln Riley from the clutches of the NFL for the next decade or so.

Riley appears to be the poster child of the offensive phenom movement. If the NFL covets even a coach with a résumé like Kingsbury's, how much more would it want a coach like Riley, who has brought to Norman the greatest offenses in school history and made quarterback prodigies out of Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts, none of whom were hailed as the finished product when they won the Oklahoma job.

And if Kingsbury shows he's capable of holding his own on football's grandest stage, won't the desire for Riley multiply even more?

Riley, of course, won't touch NFL speculation questions. For all I know, he's married to the college game `til death do they part. But the siren song of the highest level has lured many a great coach from the ivory towers.

Riley did express pride in how his old pals are doing in Arizona. Kingsbury and Riley were students together at Texas Tech and sort of teammates before Riley joined the coaching staff. And Murray won the Heisman Trophy with the Sooners last season.

“He's doing a great job,” Riley said of Kingsbury. “They've had some injury issues and a lot of turnover, obviously, in the last few years. And they're close to being way better than that, record-wise.

“It's been fun to kind of watch them here and there. They're getting better. Kyler's getting better, more comfortable. Having a quarterback like him, a mind like Kliff, they've got some good older experienced players. There's some goods there, they just needed the right people to kind of get it back on the right track. I think Kyler and Kliff are the right people.”

And that's what more than a few NFL owners or general managers will think come January. That Riley is the right people. We've focused so much on the Dallas Cowboys' soap opera as it concerns Riley, we've forgotten that all kinds of NFL jobs could be appealing, some with better quarterbacking and management options than the Cowboys offer.

Kingsbury's success has come at the expense of beleaguered teams – three straight wins, over the Bengals, Falcons and Giants – and the schedule is about to toughen severely. But two of those wins were on the road. Games you shouldn't expect the Cardinals to win. Yet win they have.

And Kingsbury has shown that sometimes, good ideas come from the college gridiron. For instance, Pro Football Focus points out that the Cardinals this season have run the ball 44 times out of the standard Air Raid formation of four wide receivers and no tight end. The rest of the league combined has run the ball 29 times this season out of that formation.

Kingsbury has brought new thinking to the NFL. We know Riley would do the same. Seems quite likely that most of the NFL knows it, too.

Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman. com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok. com/berrytramel.