On Kliff Kingsbury's magic touch, and the separation of reality & perception

There's always more to a coach than what we think.

Good hair, it turns out, can backfire. When 6-2 and 10-3 seasons as the Arizona Cardinals’ head coach went haywire, there was Kliff Kingsbury’s undeniable swagger front and center. Lazy narratives took hold. Memories raced back to the scene of Kingsbury’s 2020 Covid draft war room.

Whereas David Gettleman posted up at a cluttered wooden desk with papers everywhere, a binder 3 ½ inches thick, and a mouse plugged into a laptop that may or may not have been overheating, there was the heartthrob Kingsbury kicked back on a chic white sofa. The viral scene appeared to be straight out of a GQ photoshoot. “I do think the fire — it was 100 degrees and sunny — was a bit much,” he later joked.

Losses mounted. Kingsbury was fired. Conclusions were universally scripted in permanent marker: the coach was universally decried as too soft, too Hollywood for the big leagues. Never mind the fact that the Cardinals were run by one of the worst owners in sports and quarterbacked by a player who — while ridiculously talented — required an infamous homework clause in a contract worth $46 million per year.

Kingsbury bought a one-way ticket to Thailand and took a deep breath.

In that moment, I immediately thought back to a conversation with one of Kingsbury’s former quarterbacks at Texas Tech. A man who knows him extremely well.

Nic Shimonek backed up Patrick Mahomes before taking over as the starter. We chatted in 2020 and Shimonek couldn’t help but steer that conversation about Mahomes back to Kingsbury. There’s the obvious upside — the ability to relate to the modern athlete. Shimonek noted that the coach can talk about music, fashion. It was all a far, far cry from where the QB’s collegiate career began at the University of Iowa. Kirk Ferentz was “the exact opposite.”

“He is so old school, so by the book, it’s hard to have a true relationship with him unless you’re an offensive lineman,” Shimonek said.

Then, came the surprise.

Shimonek noted that Kingsbury is “old school” where it matters most.

He’d get to the Texas Tech facility at 3:30 a.m. each morning, and wouldn’t leave until 8:30 p.m.

He wanted the other coaches to arrive by 5, so he’d stroll in an hour and a half earlier.

The common sight was Kingsbury drenched in sweat from a full workout by 4:30 a.m.

After this, he’d watch film, conduct meetings, go back to watch film by himself, conduct quarterback meetings, then return for a third round of film.

“The way he views the game is very old school,” Shimonek said. “The way he interacts with the players and coaches in the building is very new school. So I think it’s a blend of both. He puts the time and the effort in and he’s not going to ask anything of anybody that he wouldn’t personally do.”

It can take a while for reality to slay perception, but the NFL world is finally wising up to the Real Kliff Kingsbury. As the Washington Commanders’ offensive coordinator last season, he helped a rookie quarterback take the league by storm. And now, the scintillating Jayden Daniels only trails Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow in offseason MVP odds.

The Commanders scored 28.5 points per game and new heroes emerged weekly as Daniels led four fourth-quarter comebacks.

Minicamps begin this week across the NFL.

Surely there are other coaches on the cusp of their own breakthrough season in 2025, too.

It’s as true now as it was when the 1996 Browns/Ravens fired Bill Belichick. Former NFL running back Leroy Hoard wasn’t shy in explaining to us why he believes the best head coaches often need more time than public scrutiny allows. Internally, Browns players were always stunned by Belichick’s football acumen. During pregame, Hoard told the story of his head coach giving every single one of his player’s a specific tip about a specific player they’d face that day. Externally? Belichick was the cantankerous dolt who went 6-10, 7-9, 7-9, 11-5 and 5-11 as the Browns head coach from 1991- ’95. My pal Conor Orr at SI once dug up the writing of that era. It’s a hilarious trip back in time, right down to a “Beavis and Belichick” zinger.

Kingsbury always had a pinch of Belichick to him, too.

Back in 2003, he was drafted by the New England Patriots in the sixth round and never sniffed the field his lone season with the club. Even then, he made his time count. He served as a pseudo-quality control coach, splicing up video all the time for Belichick and starter Tom Brady. He’d research what teams did on third and 10+, third and medium, third and short. The Patriots won their third of six Super Bowls.

“Because he was so bright and he was so brilliant,” Shimonek said, “they wanted him to be involved in some capacity. … The time and energy he’s put into it is literally second to none.”

Fast forward to his time as the Texas Tech head coach and Kingsbury once dug up a trick play that the New York Jets ran against the Cleveland Browns in Week 3 of the prior NFL season. When Shimonek asked how he found this play, the coach shrugged and said he studied every single offensive snap for every NFL team, Weeks 1 through 17. “So he could go back to Play 46, Bears vs. Lions,” the QB recalled, “and pull a little unique passing concept that they ran one time in the game and implement it into our gameplan that week. It was fascinating.”

His research goes deeper than the NFL, too. On his desk at Tech were stacks… upon stacks… upon stacks of yellow Legal notepads full of play diagrams. There wasn’t one empty page.

“He would sit at his main chair,” Shimonek said, “and start flipping through pages. Pages, pages, pages. And then, ‘Oh, here it is.’ And he’d pull out a play and it’s on like the 75th page. It’s some little concept he found from Bowling Green vs. like Montana State. I’m like, ‘Bro, how do you find this stuff?’ It was pretty exceptional.”

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Now that he’s teamed up with an athlete and a worker wired the right way — LSU’s Daniels — we’re seeing the best of a coach who wasn’t good enough for Arizona. All a massive credit to Dan Quinn, a grand-slam hire, who built an exceptional staff across the board.

Fresh off its shocking run to the NFC Championship Game, Washington is positioned to realistically compete for a Super Bowl this season. And come 2026? A floundering organization would be wise to give Kingsbury his own second chance as a head coach.

The Real Belichick never had a chance to fully bloom his first time ‘round. And who knows if The Hoodie becomes one of the greatest coaches ever without those Browns years. There’s also a lot to be learned through four seasons on the job. Maybe he needed those failures. All of this creates such an inexact science. Owners throughout the league struggle mightily to figure who’s a good coach, who’s a bad coach. It’s not nearly as clear as that final record may suggest at the end of a season. Time on the job helps. And the best way to construct a Super Bowl contender? Relentlessly pursue the best possible QB-HC pairing.

Don’t forget: Belichick started his New England Patriots run 5-13.

Drew Bledsoe was blasted by New York linebacker Mo Lewis on the sideline. (“I passed out on the way to the hospital and didn’t wake up for a few hours,” Bledsoe told us. “By the time I woke up, they had a tube in my chest pumping blood out.”)

Tom Brady trotted onto the field. The NFL was never the same again.

Obviously, this is the most extreme example, nothing short of a Big Bang. But it’s also exceptionally instructive because the personalities of Belichick and Brady meshed perfectly in Foxborough. From Day 1, that 199th overall pick Brady cosigned and empowered Belichick. “He became exactly what Bill needed him to be: a good little soldier,” one ex-Patriot and ex-Bill once explained to Go Long. “All of a sudden, he becomes the greatest player in the history of our game. But after he got conditioned to Bill’s Way. Bill Belichick institutionalized the shit out of a sixth-round pick that then became the greatest player ever.”

Kansas City has the modern standard today in Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes.

This player’s point was that the Bills had their own special combo in Josh Allen and Brian Daboll.

The path to a winning season will not be easy in the NFC East, but this is why I commend John Mara for sticking with Daboll as his head coach. Two rough seasons with Daniel Jones ‘n the gang have many questioning whether or not Daboll is still one of the sport’s finest teachers of the position. It got ugly — fast. But he needs the opportunity to work with a quarterback of his choosing, a quarterback on the same veins-snaking-up-neck competitive wavelength.

Now, he’ll have that chance to build something from scratch with a fireball of a quarterback in Jaxson Dart.

Mike Vrabel, fired by the Titans, just may build a winner with Drake Maye.

Meanwhile, the Commanders hit the jackpot. Quinn is a master motivator and they’ve got an OC who worked daily with both Brady and Mahomes and both succeeded and failed as a head coach himself. Those L’s on the resume can be a good thing. No doubt, Kingsbury learned plenty of those December collapses in Arizona without completely changing who he’s been as a coach.

Don’t bank on defenses catching up to the Commanders this fall. Kingsbury just may be studying grainy footage of Norm Van Brocklin and the 1950 Los Angeles Rams for all we know. This is a unit determined to stay two moves ahead.

All it takes to win in the NFL is the right coach with the right quarterback at the right time, and it doesn’t matter if the man in question has pints of hair gel or shaving cream in his bathroom cabinet.

Simple enough, right?

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