Arizona Cardinals fire head coach Kliff Kingsbury

kliff kingsbury arizona cardinals — (Photo by Ezra Shaw | Getty Images)

Black Monday has arrived for the NFL. As the regular season wrapped up on Sunday, NFL teams will now look inward to make decisions on their head coaches. The first victim this year is Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury, who was fired Monday after finishing 4-13 in his fourth year with the team.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter had the report:

“Sources: The Arizona Cardinals fired head coach Kliff Kingsbury, who 10 months ago signed a contract extension through the 2027 season. The Cardinals still never have had a head coach – any head coach – last longer than six years while the team has existed for over 100 years.”

Kingsbury’s 2022-23 Cardinals team got a raw deal on the injury front. Starting quarterback Kyler Murray went out in the middle of the year, leaving backups Trace McSorley and Colt McCoy to try and lead Arizona down the stretch. Then a slew of other starters missed significant time, leaving the Cards with barely any semblance of their starting roster by the end of the year.

However, this year was not a one-off for Kingsbury. He finished above .500 in just one of his four seasons in Arizona and lost immediately in blowout fashion to the eventual Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams. Kingsbury was 28-37-1 overall during his time as Cardinals coach, with his worst season occurring this year.

Surely Kingsbury won’t be unemployed for long. After all, Kingsbury got his first NFL head coaching gig with Arizona after he was fired as head coach of middling Big 12 power Texas Tech. His selling point at Tech, despite being fired, was the development of Patrick Mahomes into the nation’s gaudiest passer and the No. 10 pick in the 2017 NFL Draft.

Obviously, with Mahomes, the rest was history. For Kingsbury, the development of a future Super Bowl champ and likely multi-time MVP was impressive enough to land him a spot in the Big Leagues.

Now, he’ll likely be a hot commodity as either a college coach once again, or as an offensive coordinator and play-caller at either the NFL or college ranks. His career is definitely far from over.