Kliff Kingsbury Just Started His Offseason As ‘The Bachelor,’ Offensive Coordinator Edition
One of the brightest offensive coaches in the game is suddenly on the market. Which team will get his final rose?
The Bachelor always features somebody who just got dumped. It’s generally somebody who was rejected on the previous season of The Bachelorette, who in turn was likely dumped by the previous Bachelor. It helps if you were a college football star who briefly, unsuccessfully tried to make it in the pros: The current Bachelor is Colton Underwood, a former Illinois State linebacker who was on several NFL practice squads. In the past it was Jesse Palmer, who won an SEC championship under Steve Spurrier at Florida before playing eight NFL games with the Giants. And of course there was Jordan Rodgers, who started at QB for Vanderbilt before doing the practice squad bit, and who eventually won his season of The Bachelorette.
Palmer and Rodgers had very similar careers to Kliff Kingsbury, who has also just been dumped. Kingsbury threw for more than 12,000 yards at Texas Tech, finishing ninth in 2002 Heisman Trophy voting. But he wasn’t cut out for the pros—he attempted only two regular-season passes over his three years on NFL rosters—and quickly got into coaching, working as an assistant at Houston and Texas A&M before returning to Texas Tech in 2013 for his first head-coaching gig. Kingsbury blossomed into an incredible offensive coach: In his nine seasons as a head coach or coordinator, he’s produced five top-five scoring offenses, despite spending most of that time at schools that aren’t traditional powers. But those points didn’t translate into wins: Kingsbury was fired this week after going 35-40 at Texas Tech, with four losing seasons in six years.
Kingsbury would be an ideal next Bachelor. He is preposterously handsome—his resemblance to Ryan Gosling was once the subject of a Jeopardy! question. He’s also single: In fact, he believes that his handsomeness gives him an edge when recruiting the sons of single moms, who often try to flirt with him.
But Kingsbury will probably be busy. Football is undergoing an offensive revolution, and Kingsbury has been a significant part of it, even if the Red Raiders teams he coached weren’t particularly successful. Now, both NFL franchises and college powerhouses are in hot pursuit of America’s hottest coach, hoping he can unlock their teams’ offensive potential. He’s got his pick of some of the most attractive assistant jobs in football. Welcome to The OC, a dating show about Kingsbury’s quest for love in the form of a multimillion-dollar offensive coordinator job. (Wait, a different show took that name already? Ah, we’ll work on it.)
It seems ridiculous that a guy who couldn’t scrape together a winning record as a college coach could have worked with about 10 percent of the NFL’s starting quarterbacks. But that’s Kingsbury’s résumé. Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes II, who is taking the league’s record book and flinging it 80 yards downfield into the arms of a wide-open receiver, first achieved brilliance at Texas Tech. Kingsbury was the quarterbacks coach for Broncos starter Case Keenum at Houston, and Keenum went on to set NCAA records in passing yardage and total touchdowns, although his NFL career didn’t really take off until he led the Vikings to the NFC title game last season. It’s unclear how much credit we should award Kingsbury for the emergence of Baker Mayfield, the no. 1 overall pick by the Browns in this year’s NFL draft, but Kingsbury spotted him as a true freshman walk-on and granted him Texas Tech’s starting job. (Mayfield and his family now have beef with Kingsbury because of a dispute over the timing of Mayfield’s scholarship, a falling out that prompted Mayfield to transfer to Oklahoma. See, this is why contestants on The Bachelor never take the suitor who’s going to win on dates early in the season.) Kingsbury also coached Johnny Manziel to a Heisman during his stint at Texas A&M, although that doesn’t buy Kingsbury as much cred with NFL folks as I always thought it would.
In a vacuum, simply coaching a string of successful quarterbacks wouldn’t necessarily make Kingsbury a hot pro coaching prospect. It might just mean that he has an eye for talent or a knack for player development, qualities that could make him a good scout or position coach. But what’s exciting about Kingsbury isn’t just who he’s worked with; it’s what he’s gotten those players to do.
Kingsbury’s mentor is one of the masterminds who has revolutionized modern offense. As a player, Kingsbury learned from Mike Leach, the eccentric Air Raid guru. At Houston, A&M, and Texas Tech, Kingsbury proved that he could apply Leach’s teachings damn well. There are 130 FBS college football programs; in his nine years as offensive coordinator or head coach, Kingsbury finished below 25th in scoring offense just once (in 2014). Kingsbury’s critics would point out that points per game can be a misleading stat—of course his fast-paced offenses would put up more points per game than most teams, especially given that his garbage Texas Tech defenses allowed touchdowns as quickly as the Red Raiders scored. But when we account for pace with rate-based stats like S&P+, Kingsbury’s offensive track record is arguably more impressive. He was responsible for the best offense in college football twice, in 2015 at Tech and 2012 at A&M, with two more top-five finishes to his name. The Red Raiders never finished below 26th in offensive S&P+ during his time in Lubbock.
Still, the criticism about Kingsbury’s defenses was valid. Tech had a bottom-five scoring defense for three straight years. While his offenses made superstars out of lightly recruited players, his defenses made clear why Tech’s players were lightly recruited in the first place. (Would you sign up to play defense for a guy who seemingly didn’t know what he was doing on that side of the ball?)
Here’s the good news for Kliff: Defense doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but at best, defense doesn’t matter a whole lot. The NFL’s top three teams in Football Outsiders’ offensive DVOA are the Saints, Chiefs, and Rams. Incidentally, those three teams also have the three best records in football. (If you don’t like fancy stats, they’re also the top three teams in points per game.) The top three teams in defensive DVOA are the Bears, Bills, and Broncos—two of whom are below .500. Meanwhile, the Saints, Chiefs, and Rams all rank below 14th in defensive DVOA, with the Chiefs checking in at 25th. And almost all of these teams’ success comes from the passing game: The Chiefs, Rams, and Saints are also the top three in the league in net yards per passing attempt. The top three teams in net yards per rushing attempt are the Panthers, Broncos, and Chargers. (Apparently, the Broncos would have been dominant in 1987.)
Defense, though, still does matter to an extent in college: Three of the top four teams in the College Football Playoff committee rankings (Alabama, Clemson, and Notre Dame) are in the top six of defensive S&P+. A team with an explosive offense and an awful defense can excel in the NFL; the Chiefs are doing it right now. But in college, teams with that blueprint often fail.
For all of his offensive aggressiveness, Kingsbury to this point has had an unambitious career arc. He decided to be the biggest fish in the relatively fishless plains of Northwest Texas. His alma mater was the only school that would give him a head-coaching job in 2013. At the time, going home to take that gig seemed like all he’d ever wanted. It was like an award-winning math whiz graduating from an elite MIT program and immediately taking the job as principal of his old high school. Leach never won any conference championships during his tenure at Texas Tech, but he still achieved more success than the Red Raiders had seen in decades. Kingsbury arrived in Lubbock with relatively modest expectations.
The problem was that Kingsbury’s complete lack of defensive smarts prevented him from hitting those goals. It’d be like that MIT whiz kid taking the job as high school principal and remembering that he hates paperwork—and, oh yeah, children. “Texas Tech head coach” might have been the job with the best title that Kingsbury was able to get, but it wasn’t the perfect match for him, and it limited what he’s been able to accomplish in the sport. A Bachelor expert might say that Kingsbury didn’t take the Texas Tech job for the right reasons.
Only now we’ve entered the era of the offensive coordinator, and that’s the job Kingsbury was born for. All he knows about defenses is how to destroy them, which just so happens to be the most valuable knowledge in football right now. Ask Sean McVay and Andy Reid. The past two years have shown the importance of an offensive coordinator: The Falcons reached the Super Bowl with Kyle Shanahan, and the Eagles won it with Frank Reich. Both teams instantly struggled when those coaches left for head jobs elsewhere. A great OC can get a team to a Super Bowl—and Kingsbury is a great OC.
And so Kingsbury has his pick of jobs. It was reported Tuesday that he was at USC, which just fired offensive coordinator Tee Martin. If Kliff joined the Trojans, he could reawaken one of college football’s sleeping giants. There has been speculation that Alabama offensive coordinator Mike Locksley could become the next head coach at Maryland, and Kingsbury could take his job with the Crimson Tide. This could give college football’s best team a shot at exploring uncharted success on offense.
The possibility of Kingsbury serving as OC for one of college football’s blue bloods could shift the power structure of the sport. Kingsbury was able to find success with mostly lightly recruited players at Houston, A&M, and Tech; it’s terrifying to imagine what he’d be able to do at a school loaded with five-star recruits. If Bama gets to look like Texas Tech on offense while continuing to be airtight on defense, well, we’ll have no choice but to cancel the entire season.
But more intriguing are the rumors that Kingsbury could head to the NFL. There are no team names in play yet—it’s not even December, and most coaching changes happen around New Year’s Day. However, pro interest in Kingsbury is quickly growing. Tuesday, Gil Brandt tweeted that two franchises have already given him “firm offers.”
Some of the most interesting players in the NFL were coached by Kingsbury, and the most successful pro schemes are the kinds that Kingsbury knows how to run. He should be the most valuable commodity on the coaching market this offseason.
The Texas Tech job was Kingsbury’s longtime college girlfriend. He appreciated the stability, familiarity, and title, but it wasn’t his perfect match. Now he’s on the open market, and the football world is tuned in. Who will receive Kliff Kingsbury’s final rose?