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Rusty Shackelford

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Posted
Posted (edited)

Neat story about David Raih (receivers coach):

https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nfl/cardinals/2019/02/13/cardinals-receivers-coach-david-raihs-remarkable-coaching-ascension/2865152002/

Not many people are willing to walk away from a steady six-figure annual salary, attempt to switch careers on a lark, and wind up talking their way into an unpaid internship for two years.

Maybe you do that sort of thing if you’re trying to save the whales, save the planet or plan to join a cult or something.

David Raih just wanted to coach football. So that’s what he did.

The rest spoilered:

Spoiler

 

Not many people are willing to walk away from a steady six-figure annual salary, attempt to switch careers on a lark, and wind up talking their way into an unpaid internship for two years.

Maybe you do that sort of thing if you’re trying to save the whales, save the planet or plan to join a cult or something.

David Raih just wanted to coach football. So that’s what he did.

It was 11 years ago and the new Arizona Cardinals wide receivers coach was killing it as a medical sales rep for Zimmer Inc., selling hip and knee implants to surgeons at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The money was fantastic, but Raih, a former prep quarterback standout in his native Minnesota, who would go on to play at the University of Iowa, felt a burning desire to get back into football.

It became an obsession.

“The best way to answer that is I’ve always just felt an urgency to my life,” Raih, 38, said Wednesday during a news conference at the Cardinals’ Tempe training facility. “I grew up in an environment where we were always encouraged to follow our passion and do what we love.”

He wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to do it until he learned that UCLA had just hired a new head football coach, Rick Neuheisel. In late December 2007, the day Neuheisel was introduced during a news conference on campus in L.A., a tenacious Raih (pronounced RYE) decided to crash the presser, hang out in the back of the room, and then chase down Neuheisel and beg him for a job.

Cardinals wide receivers coach David Raih talks to reporters during a news conference on Feb. 13.

Cardinals wide receivers coach David Raih talks to reporters during a news conference on Feb. 13. (Photo11: Sean Logan / The Republic)

 

“He sat and waited there six hours the first day, four hours the second day, and I told him he was absolutely out of his mind,” Neuheisel recalled, shaking his head with laughter.

Raih, 27 at the time, was supposed to be in Las Vegas to receive an award for his successes in sales. Neuheisel, the former Tempe McClintock standout quarterback, who now coaches the Arizona Hotshots of the Alliance of American Football, advised Raih to go “get on the craps table, enjoy yourself, forget this crazy dream, and if you can’t, come back and see me in two weeks.”

Raih came back, all right, and he plopped himself down on a seat outside Neuheisel’s office and waited.

And waited.

“Yeah, he came back in two weeks and he sat there again,” Neuheisel said. “And I said to him, ‘You’re out of your mind.’ And he said, ‘I know, but I can’t get this out of my mind. I tried.’ So I told him, ‘OK, then you’re in. But I’m paying you nothing.’

“I told him, ‘I don’t know what to do with you.’ I had never met him before in my life until we said hello at my press conference. I know. It’s crazy.”

Something inside Neuheisel told him he needed to hire the stray who refused to leave his side. Some people just can’t say no to a lost pup with personality.

That’s what it was, too.

Neuheisel knew there was something a little bit different and a little bit special about his brand new coaching intern.

e was so intriguing,” Neuheisel said with an appreciative smile. “He was bright, he was engaging and he was passionate. And I said, ‘I can make something out of this guy.’ He had been a player, and really, you can’t get enough good people, so I just immediately realized he was good people and I hired him.”

Raih has a unique aura about him. From his piercing blue eyes that rarely ever blink to the multiple colorful bracelets around his wrists, and his slow, deliberate but engaging dialogue to the same sweat-suit attire he wears daily, he has a way of captivating your full attention.

“I’m just me,” he says.

After two years with the Bruins, where he did everything from reorganizing office supplies to recruiting and helping coach quarterbacks, Raih was told by Neuheisel that he needed to go and expand his dream and desires. So he did. Raih went back to Iowa, where he served as a graduate assistant for the Hawkeyes for three seasons from 2010-2012.

 

With no job in December 2012, Raih created a giant board with destinations of colleges and universities that had just hired new head coaches. Pulling out the same play he used at UCLA, Raih drove to Lubbock, Texas for an unannounced chance meeting with Texas Tech’s new head coach, Kliff Kingsbury.

“I had just got there and I didn’t have a clue really what was going on,” Kingsbury recalled, “so I was just sitting in my office by myself, it was Christmas break, and some guy shows up at the door in a suit and it’s freezing outside and it’s him. I let him in, we started talking, and by the time we were done, I told him, ‘Look, I don’t know what position I’ve got for you, but you’ve got a position here.’

“There was just something about him. I couldn’t say no. He did a phenomenal job for us. He helped discover Baker Mayfield for us. Baker was one of the walk-ons he got to come to Tech. He was awesome. I’m glad I hired him.”

Raih laughs when Kingsbury’s comments are relayed to him. He knows his unique career journey sounds absurd, even though it led him to the NFL, where he's spent the past five seasons as a coach on Mike McCarthy’s staff with the Green Bay Packers and it now has brought him here to the Cardinals.

How do you just talk your way into a position with someone you never met without scheduling a proper interview? And how do you manage to do it twice, for that matter?

“Yeah, so the question is like, ‘What’s the trick, right?’” Raih said. “There is no trick or magic. I think I can answer it with the quote, ‘Courage is realizing what’s important to you and it far outweighs the fear that stands in the way.’ Like, it was way more important to me to get my message across that, ‘I want to do this and I can help you and I’ll do whatever we need to do.’

“It wasn’t the words. I mean, I came at them in a way where they could feel it. It is unorthodox. I don’t know, I was just being me.”

Word of Raih’s hustle and incredible determination quickly spread throughout football and his meteoric rise continues to reach the ears of young coaches throughout the country, many of whom have called and written him seeking advice on how to advance their own careers.

“I’m thankful that it’s been an inspiring story,” he said. “But the one thing I always say with people that I talk to is, ‘Do not be a fox, be a dog wagging your tail.’ It’s totally different. Like, if you have a secretary that’s in front of the head coach, don’t try to get around the secretary.”

When Raih crashed the presser at UCLA, for example, he went straight to Jolie Oliver, the longtime executive assistant for UCLA football and told her, “Jolie, this is going to sound ridiculous. I’m in medical sales and I want to talk to the head coach about working for him. And I get if you want to throw me out of here.”

She didn’t.

Raih got his impromptu meeting with Neuheisel and the rest is history. Or, simply the beginning. Tom Clements, the Cardinals’ passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach, spent four seasons in Green Bay with Raih and said he can see Raih eventually becoming an NFL head coach.

“It would not surprise me,” Clements said. “He gets along with players great. The players love him. If you’re smart, you know your stuff and you’re personable, players react, they like you and they want to play for you. Those are a lot of good qualities to have."

“His first year he was with us in Green Bay, I worked closely with him and you could tell right away he was very interested, he wanted to learn, he had opinions and he knows what he’s doing. He’s going to be a great help to our receivers here.”

He’s already struck up a bond with the team’s veteran superstar, Larry Fitzgerald, although he admits it probably helped when Raih told Larry Legend that his mother, Molly, went to the same high school Fitzgerald did back in Minnesota.

“Oh yeah,” Raih said with a laugh. “He was blown away.”

The Cardinals hope that by working with Fitzgerald, second-year pro Christian Kirk and others, that Raih can replicate the success he had as a coach this past season in Green Bay, where Packers receivers ranked sixth overall in the league and Devonte Adams led the NFC with 13 touchdown receptions and finished with 111 catches, the second-most in franchise history.

Raih didn’t have to sell himself when it came to getting the job with the Packers, for whom he served as a quality control coach (2014-15), an assistant offensive line coach (2016), an offensive perimeter coach (2017) and the wide receivers coach (2018). They actually called him. When he answered the phone and it was McCarthy on the other end, Raih said, “I thought it was a prank phone call. Like, no joke.”

It may read like a Hollywood script, but Raih’s ascension up the coaching ladder is no joke whatsoever.

“I could tell he was going to go right up the charts,” Neuheisel said. “I’m very, very happy for him. And I don’t think it’s finished by any means. I think there’s a lot more to go for that young man.”

 

 

Edited by Rusty Shackelford
found a better version
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LTtxfan

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Posted
Posted (edited)

Cardinals listening to offers on Rosen.....

Per Cowturd, at least 3 teams have offered a 2nd Rd pick for Rosen.  Cowturd said that 2 of the teams that have offered are from the following 3 teams

  • Patriots
  • Giants
  • Chargers

(Cowturd didn't want to reveal his sources, so 1 of these 3 teams has not currently offered a 2nd Rd pick for Rosen)

Edited by LTtxfan
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Anastasis

Anastasis 23394

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-mediocre-college-coach-may-be-the-nfls-next-great-one-11566388801?

Superficial puff piece from WSJ under the tag.

Why a Mediocre College Coach May Be the NFL’s Next Great One

 

 

Why a Mediocre College Coach May Be the NFL’s Next Great One

Kliff Kingsbury went from being fired by Texas Tech to leading the vanguard of the offensive revolution in the NFL with his college-style offense and rookie quarterback Kyler Murray

By 
Andrew Beaton
Updated Aug. 21, 2019 8:24 am ET
 

GLENDALE, Ariz.—Kliff Kingsbury was utterly perplexed the first time he entered the NFL.

It was 2003, and he was drafted in the sixth round of the draft by the New England Patriots after a college career where he broke, and in many cases obliterated, all sorts of NCAA passing records. But NFL offenses looked nothing like the frenetic—and highly productive—one he starred in at Texas Tech. For years, that remained the same.

“Not seeing anything remotely close, I was always fascinated by that,” he says. And over the years he couldn’t help but think to himself: “Why is nobody trying this?”

Somebody will be trying it this year. That will be Kliff Kingsbury, who was hired to coach the Arizona Cardinals after getting fired as the coach of his alma mater, Texas Tech. Now he’s engineering the wildest experiment in the NFL: Can the Cardinals win running a college offense led by a coach who’s an offensive guru but had a losing record in college running that same system?

Kingsbury isn’t the first college coach to leap to the NFL. Jimmy Johnson won two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys. Chip Kelly looked promising before flaming out. Nick Saban went back after one season.

But the Cardinals didn’t just hire any sub-.500 college coach. They picked one with a distinct vision: that the NFL, a billion-dollar business where endless resources get poured into winning at all costs, has been stunningly slow to adopt basic changes that are backed up by analytics and success at every level of the sport.

This is precisely what Kingsbury represents: the forefront of the offense-crazed NFL. In a rapidly changing league, the Cardinals hit the fast-forward button hard with someone who’s an offensive whiz, running the schemes and concepts that were shaping the NFL’s best offenses even before he arrived.

And Kingsbury hasn’t shied away from challenging norms that since his arrival. The coach with the unusual background began his tenure by making an appropriately unusual decision: taking 5-foot-10 Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray with the first overall pick of the draft. Murray, the Cardinals felt, was a generational talent no matter his small size. But the upshot was huge: Arizona wouldn’t abide by traditions that have governed the league for decades just for the sake of doing so.

“I’ve asked a bunch of questions since I’ve been here: ‘Why don’t people do this?’ ‘Why can’t we do this?’ ‘Why can’t we do that?’” Kingsbury says. “A lot of the time, the answer just is: ‘Nobody has.’”

im-98199?width=620&size=1.5Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury and quarterback Kyler Murray walk off the field after a preseason game against the Los Angeles Chargers. PHOTO: CHRISTIAN PETERSEN /GETTY IMAGES

Two words are necessary vocabulary for understanding what makes his hiring so radical: Air Raid. That’s the name of the offense that Kingsbury played in at Texas Tech, and later used there when he was the team’s coach.

The Air Raid barely resembles traditional football, and that’s on purpose. Air Raid offenses are premised on the extreme. They almost exclusively line up out of the shotgun, they play at a lightning pace, and they aggressively spread the field to pass the ball down field, again and again.

 

The Air Raid was an idea born out of desperation. Thirty years ago, Hal Mumme and Mike Leach needed an edge at Iowa Wesleyan, an off-the-map NAIA college, and came up with the crazy offense. And it was so effective that it trickled up the ranks of college football and produced outrageous numbers—Kingsbury left Texas Tech with NCAA records for most career passing attempts, completions and more.

Except for years, NFL teams turned their noses at it. They concluded, en masse, that no matter how well it worked in college, it would never work in the pros. More concerningly, they thought, it produced flawed players who sputtered when they had to learn NFL-style offenses.

Then the same minds that for decades considered the Air Raid a gimmick began sprinkling elements of it into their offenses. And the ideas they shunned for years began producing the most efficient offenses in the NFL. Meanwhile, those players are no longer seen as flawed—they’re the NFL’s next generation of stars. That includes Patrick Mahomes, who Kingsbury coached at Texas Tech.

Kingsbury’s expertise as a player and coach in this system—plus his experience of having briefly played in the NFL—made him a cutting-edge hire. He ran some of college football’s most dynamic offenses and developed the NFL’s pre-eminent star. There was also an obvious question mark: in six seasons coaching the Red Raiders, he went only 35-40.

im-100047?width=620&size=1.5
In six seasons as head coach at Texas Tech, Kliff Kingsbury went 35-40. PHOTO: TRAVIS TUSTIN/ICON SMI/ZUMA PRESS

And Kingsbury’s doubters may latch onto Arizona’s early pre-season games, where the offense has struggled and at times looked out of sorts. His ideas, though, aren’t theoretical: they’re supported by quants who urge offenses to play faster, out of the shotgun more often and throw it without abandon because it’s more efficient. That’s exactly what the Cardinals plan to do. With their modification of the Air Raid, they will rarely line up under center, and they’ll likely run more plays than almost every other team in the league—ideas that have driven modern NFL success and are backed up by stacks of data.

Still, it’s impossible to grasp Kingsbury’s vision without considering it through someone else: Kyler Murray. “He would’ve been playing baseball five years ago,” Kingsbury says.

Murray had the pleasant problem of being one of the best players on the planet in two sports. The Oakland A’s took him with the ninth overall pick in the draft last year and promised him millions of dollars. It wasn’t particularly controversial because Murray wasn’t seen as an elite NFL prospect.

im-98198?width=620&size=1.5Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury talks with quarterback Kyler Murray. PHOTO: ROSS D. FRANKLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

This was for a few reasons. He had played only sparingly until his last year at Oklahoma. He played in one of those so-called college offenses for the Sooners. And he’s 5-foot-10, which you may have heard is just a little bit short for playing quarterback in the NFL.

But in the manner of months last fall, the NFL changed rapidly in a way that transformed the likes of Kingsbury and Murray from fringe outsiders to the vanguard of a revolution. Mahomes became the NFL’s MVP. Baker Mayfield, Murray’s predecessor at Oklahoma and another small-statured quarterback, shined as a rookie for the Cleveland Browns. Innovative coaches who adopted college offense concepts, like Andy Reid and Sean McVay, dominated the league.

So when Kingsbury took over the Cardinals, he wasn’t charged with trying to adapt to the NFL. They wanted something else: the NFL adapting to the Cardinals.

 

Edited by Anastasis
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Dennis Taylor

Dennis Taylor 18706

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Anastasis said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-mediocre-college-coach-may-be-the-nfls-next-great-one-11566388801?

Superficial puff piece from WSJ under the tag.

Why a Mediocre College Coach May Be the NFL’s Next Great One

 

  Hide contents

Why a Mediocre College Coach May Be the NFL’s Next Great One

Kliff Kingsbury went from being fired by Texas Tech to leading the vanguard of the offensive revolution in the NFL with his college-style offense and rookie quarterback Kyler Murray

By 
Andrew Beaton
Updated Aug. 21, 2019 8:24 am ET
 

GLENDALE, Ariz.—Kliff Kingsbury was utterly perplexed the first time he entered the NFL.

It was 2003, and he was drafted in the sixth round of the draft by the New England Patriots after a college career where he broke, and in many cases obliterated, all sorts of NCAA passing records. But NFL offenses looked nothing like the frenetic—and highly productive—one he starred in at Texas Tech. For years, that remained the same.

“Not seeing anything remotely close, I was always fascinated by that,” he says. And over the years he couldn’t help but think to himself: “Why is nobody trying this?”

Somebody will be trying it this year. That will be Kliff Kingsbury, who was hired to coach the Arizona Cardinals after getting fired as the coach of his alma mater, Texas Tech. Now he’s engineering the wildest experiment in the NFL: Can the Cardinals win running a college offense led by a coach who’s an offensive guru but had a losing record in college running that same system?

Kingsbury isn’t the first college coach to leap to the NFL. Jimmy Johnson won two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys. Chip Kelly looked promising before flaming out. Nick Saban went back after one season.

But the Cardinals didn’t just hire any sub-.500 college coach. They picked one with a distinct vision: that the NFL, a billion-dollar business where endless resources get poured into winning at all costs, has been stunningly slow to adopt basic changes that are backed up by analytics and success at every level of the sport.

This is precisely what Kingsbury represents: the forefront of the offense-crazed NFL. In a rapidly changing league, the Cardinals hit the fast-forward button hard with someone who’s an offensive whiz, running the schemes and concepts that were shaping the NFL’s best offenses even before he arrived.

And Kingsbury hasn’t shied away from challenging norms that since his arrival. The coach with the unusual background began his tenure by making an appropriately unusual decision: taking 5-foot-10 Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray with the first overall pick of the draft. Murray, the Cardinals felt, was a generational talent no matter his small size. But the upshot was huge: Arizona wouldn’t abide by traditions that have governed the league for decades just for the sake of doing so.

“I’ve asked a bunch of questions since I’ve been here: ‘Why don’t people do this?’ ‘Why can’t we do this?’ ‘Why can’t we do that?’” Kingsbury says. “A lot of the time, the answer just is: ‘Nobody has.’”

im-98199?width=620&size=1.5Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury and quarterback Kyler Murray walk off the field after a preseason game against the Los Angeles Chargers. PHOTO: CHRISTIAN PETERSEN /GETTY IMAGES

Two words are necessary vocabulary for understanding what makes his hiring so radical: Air Raid. That’s the name of the offense that Kingsbury played in at Texas Tech, and later used there when he was the team’s coach.

The Air Raid barely resembles traditional football, and that’s on purpose. Air Raid offenses are premised on the extreme. They almost exclusively line up out of the shotgun, they play at a lightning pace, and they aggressively spread the field to pass the ball down field, again and again.

 

The Air Raid was an idea born out of desperation. Thirty years ago, Hal Mumme and Mike Leach needed an edge at Iowa Wesleyan, an off-the-map NAIA college, and came up with the crazy offense. And it was so effective that it trickled up the ranks of college football and produced outrageous numbers—Kingsbury left Texas Tech with NCAA records for most career passing attempts, completions and more.

Except for years, NFL teams turned their noses at it. They concluded, en masse, that no matter how well it worked in college, it would never work in the pros. More concerningly, they thought, it produced flawed players who sputtered when they had to learn NFL-style offenses.

Then the same minds that for decades considered the Air Raid a gimmick began sprinkling elements of it into their offenses. And the ideas they shunned for years began producing the most efficient offenses in the NFL. Meanwhile, those players are no longer seen as flawed—they’re the NFL’s next generation of stars. That includes Patrick Mahomes, who Kingsbury coached at Texas Tech.

Kingsbury’s expertise as a player and coach in this system—plus his experience of having briefly played in the NFL—made him a cutting-edge hire. He ran some of college football’s most dynamic offenses and developed the NFL’s pre-eminent star. There was also an obvious question mark: in six seasons coaching the Red Raiders, he went only 35-40.

im-100047?width=620&size=1.5
In six seasons as head coach at Texas Tech, Kliff Kingsbury went 35-40. PHOTO: TRAVIS TUSTIN/ICON SMI/ZUMA PRESS

And Kingsbury’s doubters may latch onto Arizona’s early pre-season games, where the offense has struggled and at times looked out of sorts. His ideas, though, aren’t theoretical: they’re supported by quants who urge offenses to play faster, out of the shotgun more often and throw it without abandon because it’s more efficient. That’s exactly what the Cardinals plan to do. With their modification of the Air Raid, they will rarely line up under center, and they’ll likely run more plays than almost every other team in the league—ideas that have driven modern NFL success and are backed up by stacks of data.

Still, it’s impossible to grasp Kingsbury’s vision without considering it through someone else: Kyler Murray. “He would’ve been playing baseball five years ago,” Kingsbury says.

Murray had the pleasant problem of being one of the best players on the planet in two sports. The Oakland A’s took him with the ninth overall pick in the draft last year and promised him millions of dollars. It wasn’t particularly controversial because Murray wasn’t seen as an elite NFL prospect.

im-98198?width=620&size=1.5Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury talks with quarterback Kyler Murray. PHOTO: ROSS D. FRANKLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

This was for a few reasons. He had played only sparingly until his last year at Oklahoma. He played in one of those so-called college offenses for the Sooners. And he’s 5-foot-10, which you may have heard is just a little bit short for playing quarterback in the NFL.

But in the manner of months last fall, the NFL changed rapidly in a way that transformed the likes of Kingsbury and Murray from fringe outsiders to the vanguard of a revolution. Mahomes became the NFL’s MVP. Baker Mayfield, Murray’s predecessor at Oklahoma and another small-statured quarterback, shined as a rookie for the Cleveland Browns. Innovative coaches who adopted college offense concepts, like Andy Reid and Sean McVay, dominated the league.

So when Kingsbury took over the Cardinals, he wasn’t charged with trying to adapt to the NFL. They wanted something else: the NFL adapting to the Cardinals.

 

do they have a picture of them walking off the field after the game against the raiders? cause i bet they had different expressions on their faces

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Dirk X West

Dirk X West 772

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Anastasis said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-mediocre-college-coach-may-be-the-nfls-next-great-one-11566388801?

Superficial puff piece from WSJ under the tag.

Why a Mediocre College Coach May Be the NFL’s Next Great One

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Why a Mediocre College Coach May Be the NFL’s Next Great One

Kliff Kingsbury went from being fired by Texas Tech to leading the vanguard of the offensive revolution in the NFL with his college-style offense and rookie quarterback Kyler Murray

By 
Andrew Beaton
Updated Aug. 21, 2019 8:24 am ET
 

GLENDALE, Ariz.—Kliff Kingsbury was utterly perplexed the first time he entered the NFL.

It was 2003, and he was drafted in the sixth round of the draft by the New England Patriots after a college career where he broke, and in many cases obliterated, all sorts of NCAA passing records. But NFL offenses looked nothing like the frenetic—and highly productive—one he starred in at Texas Tech. For years, that remained the same.

“Not seeing anything remotely close, I was always fascinated by that,” he says. And over the years he couldn’t help but think to himself: “Why is nobody trying this?”

Somebody will be trying it this year. That will be Kliff Kingsbury, who was hired to coach the Arizona Cardinals after getting fired as the coach of his alma mater, Texas Tech. Now he’s engineering the wildest experiment in the NFL: Can the Cardinals win running a college offense led by a coach who’s an offensive guru but had a losing record in college running that same system?

Kingsbury isn’t the first college coach to leap to the NFL. Jimmy Johnson won two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys. Chip Kelly looked promising before flaming out. Nick Saban went back after one season.

But the Cardinals didn’t just hire any sub-.500 college coach. They picked one with a distinct vision: that the NFL, a billion-dollar business where endless resources get poured into winning at all costs, has been stunningly slow to adopt basic changes that are backed up by analytics and success at every level of the sport.

This is precisely what Kingsbury represents: the forefront of the offense-crazed NFL. In a rapidly changing league, the Cardinals hit the fast-forward button hard with someone who’s an offensive whiz, running the schemes and concepts that were shaping the NFL’s best offenses even before he arrived.

And Kingsbury hasn’t shied away from challenging norms that since his arrival. The coach with the unusual background began his tenure by making an appropriately unusual decision: taking 5-foot-10 Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray with the first overall pick of the draft. Murray, the Cardinals felt, was a generational talent no matter his small size. But the upshot was huge: Arizona wouldn’t abide by traditions that have governed the league for decades just for the sake of doing so.

“I’ve asked a bunch of questions since I’ve been here: ‘Why don’t people do this?’ ‘Why can’t we do this?’ ‘Why can’t we do that?’” Kingsbury says. “A lot of the time, the answer just is: ‘Nobody has.’”

im-98199?width=620&size=1.5Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury and quarterback Kyler Murray walk off the field after a preseason game against the Los Angeles Chargers. PHOTO: CHRISTIAN PETERSEN /GETTY IMAGES

Two words are necessary vocabulary for understanding what makes his hiring so radical: Air Raid. That’s the name of the offense that Kingsbury played in at Texas Tech, and later used there when he was the team’s coach.

The Air Raid barely resembles traditional football, and that’s on purpose. Air Raid offenses are premised on the extreme. They almost exclusively line up out of the shotgun, they play at a lightning pace, and they aggressively spread the field to pass the ball down field, again and again.

 

The Air Raid was an idea born out of desperation. Thirty years ago, Hal Mumme and Mike Leach needed an edge at Iowa Wesleyan, an off-the-map NAIA college, and came up with the crazy offense. And it was so effective that it trickled up the ranks of college football and produced outrageous numbers—Kingsbury left Texas Tech with NCAA records for most career passing attempts, completions and more.

Except for years, NFL teams turned their noses at it. They concluded, en masse, that no matter how well it worked in college, it would never work in the pros. More concerningly, they thought, it produced flawed players who sputtered when they had to learn NFL-style offenses.

Then the same minds that for decades considered the Air Raid a gimmick began sprinkling elements of it into their offenses. And the ideas they shunned for years began producing the most efficient offenses in the NFL. Meanwhile, those players are no longer seen as flawed—they’re the NFL’s next generation of stars. That includes Patrick Mahomes, who Kingsbury coached at Texas Tech.

Kingsbury’s expertise as a player and coach in this system—plus his experience of having briefly played in the NFL—made him a cutting-edge hire. He ran some of college football’s most dynamic offenses and developed the NFL’s pre-eminent star. There was also an obvious question mark: in six seasons coaching the Red Raiders, he went only 35-40.

im-100047?width=620&size=1.5
In six seasons as head coach at Texas Tech, Kliff Kingsbury went 35-40. PHOTO: TRAVIS TUSTIN/ICON SMI/ZUMA PRESS

And Kingsbury’s doubters may latch onto Arizona’s early pre-season games, where the offense has struggled and at times looked out of sorts. His ideas, though, aren’t theoretical: they’re supported by quants who urge offenses to play faster, out of the shotgun more often and throw it without abandon because it’s more efficient. That’s exactly what the Cardinals plan to do. With their modification of the Air Raid, they will rarely line up under center, and they’ll likely run more plays than almost every other team in the league—ideas that have driven modern NFL success and are backed up by stacks of data.

Still, it’s impossible to grasp Kingsbury’s vision without considering it through someone else: Kyler Murray. “He would’ve been playing baseball five years ago,” Kingsbury says.

Murray had the pleasant problem of being one of the best players on the planet in two sports. The Oakland A’s took him with the ninth overall pick in the draft last year and promised him millions of dollars. It wasn’t particularly controversial because Murray wasn’t seen as an elite NFL prospect.

im-98198?width=620&size=1.5Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury talks with quarterback Kyler Murray. PHOTO: ROSS D. FRANKLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

This was for a few reasons. He had played only sparingly until his last year at Oklahoma. He played in one of those so-called college offenses for the Sooners. And he’s 5-foot-10, which you may have heard is just a little bit short for playing quarterback in the NFL.

But in the manner of months last fall, the NFL changed rapidly in a way that transformed the likes of Kingsbury and Murray from fringe outsiders to the vanguard of a revolution. Mahomes became the NFL’s MVP. Baker Mayfield, Murray’s predecessor at Oklahoma and another small-statured quarterback, shined as a rookie for the Cleveland Browns. Innovative coaches who adopted college offense concepts, like Andy Reid and Sean McVay, dominated the league.

So when Kingsbury took over the Cardinals, he wasn’t charged with trying to adapt to the NFL. They wanted something else: the NFL adapting to the Cardinals.

 

Kliff was "mediocre" at Tech? oooook.  I guess life is just easier when you're good looking.

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Blotto

Blotto 23434

Posted
Posted

Remember way back in 2013 when Chip Kelley was going to revolutionize the NFL with his up tempo spread offense? Can someone explain to me how Coach Bro isn't just a shittier version of Chip Kelly, who bombed out at two NFL teams?

I'm sure there are differences between their systems, but not being a huge x's and o's guy, what is so radically  different between the air raid and the spread option. The NFL adjusted to Chips tempo on offense relatively quickly, is there reason to believe that they can't do the same with KK?

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aggie08

aggie08 21434

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Remember way back in 2013 when Chip Kelley was going to revolutionize the NFL with his up tempo spread offense? Can someone explain to me how Coach Bro isn't just a shittier version of Chip Kelly, who bombed out at two NFL teams?

I'm sure there are differences between their systems, but not being a huge x's and o's guy, what is so radically  different between the air raid and the spread option. The NFL adjusted to Chips tempo on offense relatively quickly, is there reason to believe that they can't do the same with KK?

Because Chip Kelly is old and gross, and Kliff is young and cool. Duh.

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Eugene11

Eugene11 375

Posted
Posted
On 2/18/2019 at 5:40 PM, Mach 1 said:

Jesus, must be nice after a hard days work to grab a drink, go out on the back patio, and look out over a beautiful golf course field of dirt and dead grass.

LOL  my first thought was "damn  look at that shit hole around it."  I wouldnt pay $300k for that house there.  

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Gigglebush

Gigglebush 107

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, ClubWhatever said:

He was gifted a top notch staff that somebody else assembled and doesn’t have to do anything but come up with offensive game plans 24/7/365.  Not quite the same parameters as he operated under at Tech. 

Yeah having Vance Joseph as head coach of the defense has been huge for Kliff. But still, going from worst in the NFL to a 9-2 start in year 3 is crazy. He's also been able to adjust his gameplans enough to go 2-1 with Colt as QB while missing Hopkins and various OL. 

Edited by Gigglebush
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futureman

futureman 22415

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, ClubWhatever said:

He was gifted a top notch staff that somebody else assembled and doesn’t have to do anything but come up with offensive game plans 24/7/365.  Not quite the same parameters as he operated under at Tech. 

don’t be such a bitch. he’s still the head coach and they are beating people with a backup quarterback. 

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Ignatius

Ignatius 4002

Posted
Posted

A lot of great coaches are football junkies who only want to coach, watch film, and game plan. Don’t have to deal with texting 16-18 year olds, don’t have to deal with fuckhead alums, don’t have to deal with players’ fucking parents…

You can see how a non-CEO type coach could function better in the pro game than college.

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Augustus

Augustus 3061

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Posted
8 hours ago, Helobious said:

This site has also unanimously said Kyler Murray would be a miserable failure at QB ever since he was playing at Allen. Starting to think we just don’t know shit about football.

"Prediction" threads on just about any college football message boards have little to do with objectivity or nuance. They're an exercise in wishcasting.

"Oklahoma is a program in major decline" is an example on Surly, among tons of others.  But every board is full of them, and they generally assure the failure/downfall of players/programs the board doesn't much care for, although they do get non-rival stuff wrong, too.  Herman Edwards.

And that's aside from the fact that predicting just about anything accurately is next to impossible.

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Azbadlands

Azbadlands 109

Posted
Posted
On 8/21/2019 at 1:44 PM, Blotto said:

Remember way back in 2013 when Chip Kelley was going to revolutionize the NFL with his up tempo spread offense? Can someone explain to me how Coach Bro isn't just a shittier version of Chip Kelly, who bombed out at two NFL teams?

I'm sure there are differences between their systems, but not being a huge x's and o's guy, what is so radically  different between the air raid and the spread option. The NFL adjusted to Chips tempo on offense relatively quickly, is there reason to believe that they can't do the same with KK?

The players are the difference.  Without Kyler and Dhop, Kliff would be on a smoking hot seat.  Kylers running ability and Dhops  amazing ability to be open all the time has got them a lot of wins...

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