After a disastrous season, the Arizona Cardinals fired their head coach Steve Wilkins and have now replaced him with USC offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury. ESPN reports that Kingsbury had only spent a month with USC as their offensive coordinator before making the leap to the National Football League. Kingsbury heads to a struggling Cardinals led by the young Josh Rosen.
Kingsbury's first test will be the 2019 NFL Draft.
Arizona putting hopes on an offensive driven coach
NFL insiders see Kingsbury as an up-and-coming offensive genius who has coached Patrick Mahomes at Texas Tech and is even friends with Sean McVay. Many franchises are taking gambles on young innovative minds, the Arizona Cardinals are hoping they can turn their franchise around.
Kliff Kingsbury doesn't have a strong record as a head coach. While at Texas Tech he went 35-40, leading him to be fired this past fall. Arizona is a team, full of young players, including Josh Rosen who is a quality quarterback.
Arizona is ready to welcome Kingsbury with open arms.
Rosen will benefit the most from this hire. Under Wilks, Josh Rosen threw for 2,278 yards, 11 touchdowns, and 14 interceptions in 14 games as a rookie. Wilks came over after being Carolina's defensive coordinator and ended up promoting Byron Leftwich to offensive coordinator. Now Wilks and Leftwich are gone, giving Rosen his third offensive coordinator in a single year.
Arizona and the franchise are in dire need of a major change in philosophy. Kingsbury is the man for the job, but can he draw a quality coaching staff to Arizona. Kingsbury has never coached in the NFL, making it a challenge to put together a strong coaching staff around him.
Arizona might have made the wrong decision
Bleacher Report points out that two other choices for a head coach could have been Mike Munchak and Dino Babers. These are two coaches that have a stronger resume. Munchak has NFL experience and can put together a strong offensive line. Babers brought Syracuse back to prominence and has experience leading a strong offense with the UA attack under Dick Tomey.
Steve Wilks should have had more than one year to develop his system, even while things were clearly not working right. Kliff Kingsbury now brings innovation to Arizona. However, he now has to sell to the fanbase that he's the new pair of eyes that can shake things up.
While Kingsbury may be experienced with game planning and strategy, he's not good with personnel evaluation. Kingsbury could help his case, if he was able to explain what he did to turn Johnny Manziel, Case Keenum and Patrick Mahomes into star players.