What a complete shocker this news was. Michael Bidwill and the Arizona Cardinals have made the least surprising coaching firing of the season as they relieved Kliff Kingsbury of his duties after a dreadful 4-13 season.
This was always going to happen as soon as the Kyler Murray “study session” contract clause leaked to the press in the offseason, though I’m kind of surprised Kingsbury actually survived the season.
The Arizona Cardinals have never been known to be the most patient of organizations as they have never had a head coach last more than 6 years in the nearly 130-year history of the team (est. 1898), which should tell you how chaotic and unsuccessful this team has been.
In truth, I don’t think there has been a worse team in all of North American professional sports as the Arizona Cardinals have only won 2 championships (1925, 1947) in 125 years as a team, despite the NFL and the league before the NFL not having an ounce of the competitiveness we see today. I mean, this team has only made the playoffs 11 times since 1947 and has never won a Super Bowl in the modern era of the NFL or as a team based out of Arizona.
Yup, the two championships the team won was when they were based in Chicago as the Chicago Cardinals.
Even the Chicago Cubs, who had a 100+ year World Series drought, have won more championships in their, respective, sport than their former city neighbors.
Therefore, it’s hard to blame all of the issues that have plagued the Cardinals this season on Kliff Kingsbury as this is just a failed franchise.
However, Kingsbury never should have gotten the job in the first place as he was not only a college coach well out of his depth in the NFL, but he also wasn’t even that great as a college coach to begin with.
Prior to even joining the Cardinals, he was coming off three straight losing seasons (and 4/6 overall) at Texas Tech. For those of you who don’t follow college football, that’s a HORRIBLE record for an HC. A decent college coach needs to have a winning season of 2 losses or less every year or else they are fired, let alone having a losing record in 67% of their career.
How Michael Bidwill though it was a good idea to make him the HC of an NFL franchise for 4 seasons beats me and is the reason why the Cardinals have always been awful.
Aside from last season when the Cardinals got blown out in the Wild Card round after staring 7-0, the Kingsbury Cardinals have been a laughingstock. They finished 5-10-1 in Kingbury first year in 2019, 8-8 in 2020, collapsed mid-season to finish 11-7 in 2021, and then a horrific 4-13 season this year to wrap of his coaching resume.
Like I’ve said 1,000 times with Kingsbury, once NFL defenses and defensive coordinators figured out his clever college tricks, he was screwed. And seeing how Kyler Murray completely turned on him and is also a college-like quarterback (he hasn’t mastered the fundamentals of being a QB, but rather over relies on scrambling), the 31 other NFL defenses had a field day tearing apart every one of Kingsbury’s schemes.
It’s unfortunate that he got fired but it was the right thing to do.
Now, the only thing Cardinals fans need to worry about is how to move on from Kyler Murray’s 5-year, $230.5M contract and Michael Bidwill’s ownership of the team. Nothing too major, right?
Images Source: Featured Image:
