The list of NFL and college football teams that wanted Kliff Kingsbury was probably short.
After six years as the head coach at Texas Tech, Kliff Kingsbury was fired at the end of a 5-7 season. But finding another job didn’t take him long.
On Nov. 29, there were multiple reports that pointed towards Kingsbury accepting the offensive coordinator job at USC under Trojans’ head coach Clay Helton. 247Sports’ Inside Troy reported that Kingsbury has “agreed in principle,” but NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that the head coach was still vetting college and NFL offers.
A week later, it was made official:
OFFICIAL: Kliff Kingsbury is USC’s new offensive coordinator! #FightOnpic.twitter.com/ydZLqDbOpz
— USC Trojans (@USC_Athletics) December 5, 2018
It’s a big coup for the USC, because there was no shortage of teams vying for Kingsbury’s services. Three days after he was fired, he already reportedly had two “firm offers” to join an NFL coaching staff:
The phone of former Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury has been ringing off the hook from NFL teams, including two that have given him firm offers. College offense has infiltrated the NFL and Kingsbury's superb knowledge of it is in high demand.
— Gil Brandt (@Gil_Brandt) November 27, 2018
One of those offers was reportedly with the Los Angeles Rams.
As I just said on FOX, there’s significant NFL interest in former Texas Tech HC Kliff Kingsbury. Rams HC Sean McVay reached out to Kingsbury last week and discussed having Kingsbury come aboard for this stretch run in an offensive assistant/consultant role. @NFLonFOX@gmfb
— Peter Schrager (@PSchrags) December 2, 2018
The NFL’s interest in Kingsbury wasn’t just for an offensive coordinator gig either:
Source says USC would like an answer from Kliff Kingsbury by midweek. Kliff's holdup isn’t merely interest from NFL teams to join staff — but also NFL teams with interest in him as HEAD coaching possibility. Given the timeline… He’ll have to decide the worth of a bird in hand.
— Jeff Darlington (@JeffDarlington) December 2, 2018
The 39-year-old is a former Texas Tech quarterback under Mike Leach who had a brief NFL career before rising through the coaching ranks as an offensive coordinator at Houston and Texas A&M. At the latter, he helped Johnny Manziel win the Heisman Trophy.
At Texas Tech, Kingsbury again coached up a high-octane offense — led for a while by Patrick Mahomes— but the defense could never keep up.
Once he was no longer a head coach, just about every football team was licking their chops at the idea of Kingsbury running its offense.
Why was Kingsbury in demand?
Points. Sweet, delicious points.
The Texas Tech offense averaged 37.8 points in his 75 games as head coach. He helped Manziel turn Texas A&M into an offensive juggernaut, and then did the same at Texas Tech with Mahomes, Davis Webb, and Nic Shimonek.
No era was more prolific than Mahomes’ two years at the helm. Texas Tech averaged 45.1 points per game in 2015 and 43.7 points in 2016.
In 2018, true freshman Alan Bowman took over at quarterback for Texas Tech early in the season after junior McLane Carter suffered an ankle injury. Then Bowman suffered a collapsed lung and was replaced by sophomore Jeff Duffey. Despite those injuries, Texas Tech is still 26th in the offensive S&P+ ratings.
The problem in Lubbock is — and always has been — defense.
Texas Tech is 91st in the defensive S&P+ ratings this season and never finished higher than 83rd during Kingsbury’s tenure. The team consistently scored more than 30 points in losses.
Most famously, there was the time Mahomes had 819 combined passing and rushing yards, but Texas Tech still lost to a Baker Mayfield-led Oklahoma team, 66-59, in October 2016.
The consistent defensive letdowns kept Texas Tech stuck in neutral and eventually led to Kingsbury’s firing. But what if he was in charge of nothing but offense?
Like Lane Kiffin’s three-year stint at Alabama (oh god, what if Alabama hired Kingsbury?), similarly making Kingsbury an offensive coordinator while someone else is in charge of keeping teams off the scoreboard just makes too much sense.
Kingsbury has developed several NFL quarterbacks
Before landing the head coaching job at Texas Tech, Kingsbury was a finalist for the Broyles Award in 2012, recognizing the top assistant coach in the nation. That honor came because Kingsbury helped redshirt freshman Johnny Manziel to the Heisman Trophy in a Texas A&M offense that averaged 44.5 points per game.
Before he joined Texas A&M, Kingsbury spent four seasons as an assistant at Houston. There, he helped develop Case Keenum and was co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach when Houston averaged 49.3 points in 2011.
Both Mahomes and Manziel ended up being first-round picks in the NFL, and Keenum has been a starter for the Rams, Vikings, and Broncos, despite going undrafted.
That’s an impressive list of protégés for someone who’s only a decade into his coaching career.
It’s not perfect, though. When he arrived at Texas Tech in 2013, he had a pair of freshman quarterbacks: Davis Webb and Baker Mayfield. Both transferred, and Mayfield went on to become a Heisman Trophy winner at Oklahoma and No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft.
“When I got hurt, there was no communication between me and my coach,” Mayfield told ESPN. “When I got healthy, I didn’t know why I wasn’t playing right away. At that time, we were losing a couple games in a row. I was still clueless as to why I wasn’t playing. That was really frustrating for me because I started the first five games and we won. So, I just didn’t really know exactly what he was thinking or what the situation was.”
Webb’s transfer happened after Mahomes supplanted him as the starter. Webb was eventually drafted in the third round of the 2017 NFL Draft by the Giants, but waived a year later. He’s now a member of the Jets.
At USC, Kingsbury will be tasked with the development of J.T. Daniels, a 6’3, 200-pound quarterback who started as a true freshman for the Trojans in 2018. He finished the year with 14 touchdowns and 10 interceptions.
It’s time to embrace the air raid
Mahomes put up huge numbers in Kingsbury’s offense, but there was reason to be pessimistic about his ability to continue to produce in the NFL.
At the time, there wasn’t a successful single NFL quarterback who was a product of a college air raid offense. Jared Goff had just finished a horrible rookie season and the closest thing to a success story was Nick Foles.
Since then, Goff has ascended into one of the NFL’s elite passers, Foles won the Super Bowl MVP award, and Mahomes is currently making a case as the 2018 NFL MVP. It’s air raid season.
Shotgun is an increasingly large part of an NFL team’s playbook, and spread concepts are leaking up from the college ranks to the professional ones.
One of the criticisms of the air raid offense is that it has historically been, in the words of SB Nation’s Jason Kirk, “an underdog offense, for teams that can’t just overpower or out-speed opponents.” But Kingsbury’s Texas Tech always had a bit more than that.
“Our offense is a lot more complex than the old air raid, because Coach Kingsbury, coming from the NFL, has made it more complex,” Mahomes told Bleacher Report in 2017. “And that’s why it’s so successful.”
Washington State head coach Mike Leach explained that his air raid offense aims to “throw it short to people who can score.” But Mahomes attempted 91 deep passes in his final season at Texas Tech, fifth-most in the nation. That makes Kingsbury’s offense dangerous at any level of football.
Offense is at an all-time high in the NFL and teams that aren’t thinking progressively are running the risk of getting left behind. While Kingsbury didn’t find his way into the NFL, the fact that he was coveted in the professional ranks show that there are teams trying to get ahead of football’s offensive revolution. Instead, it’s USC that hopes to reap those rewards.