McVay and friends: Rams coach endorses Cardinals’ hire of Kingsbury
Jan 9, 2019, 9:16 AM | Updated: 2:31 pm
We get it. Sean McVay is young, well kept and a brilliant offensive football guru.
The Los Angeles Rams head coach finding success over the past two years basically forced opponents in a copy-cat league to copy-cat his hiring.
Last offseason, the Chicago Bears made a similar move by hiring then-39-year-old Matt Nagy, and their success with a 12-4 season in 2018 only built other NFL teams’ confidence that young, offense-first football coaches are the way to go.
The Packers bought in this offseason. They hired former Rams and Titans offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur, who coached under McVay in L.A. last season.
Also buying in were the Arizona Cardinals, who on Tuesday hired fired Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury to replace the ousted Steve Wilks.
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Like LaFleur and McVay, Kingsbury is in his 30s.
And like LaFleur, Kingsbury is linked to the Rams head coach, who said in December he spoke with Kingsbury about potential job opportunities on the Los Angeles staff. Kingsbury, who was fired by Texas Tech after this past season, instead took the offensive coordinator post with the USC Trojans.
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They will reportedly be paid a buyout of $150,000 by the Cardinals after Kingsbury left USC following a brief stay.
So after Arizona hired Kingsbury on Tuesday, McVay gave the NFC West division rival his stamp of approval.
“I couldn’t be happier for him. I know that he’ll do a great job,” McVay told reporters in Los Angeles. “We’ll try to get after him twice a year, but other than that, you know, happy for Kliff. He’s a great coach, great communicator, great understanding of how to apply pressure to a defense.
“He’s had a lot of success running a variety of different offenses, and you’ve seen him succeed with a lot of different players, whether it be going back to A&M, Houston, even when you look at what he’s done at Texas Tech when he was head coach there.”
