The Arizona Cardinals’ season is over and it ended embarrassingly, a 34-11 loss to the Los Angeles Rams in the first round of the playoffs. After a 7-0 start, they limped into the playoffs at 11-6 and, including the playoff loss, lost five of their last six games.
The disappointing finish combined with the failures in the final games of the 2020 season have led many to call for a change in leadership.
They want Kliff Kingsbury fired.
That’s a hard sell.
After all, the Cardinals just had their best season since 2015 and their first playoff game in six seasons.
Kingsbury has led the Cardinals to improvement each of the three seasons he has coached the team.
He has taken a three-win team and built it into a playoff team.
If you replace him, you want to bring in someone who is better. Who out there has that resume — taking a bad team and building it to a playoff team or taking a playoff team and making it a champion?
To fire Kingsbury would be only looking at the lows and ignoring the highs.
This is the same coach that led a 5-2 team last season and a 7-0 team this season. The ceiling is high.
The end-of-season struggles are naturally concerns.
This is why there are questions to begin with.
However, if you see the highs and you see steady improvement, how can you not give him another year?
It makes 2022 incredibly important. There almost has to be some sort of mandate where there are no excuses.
The issue is, of course, that he coached teams that heightened expectations early on.
But the truth is that his teams have not underachieved based on preseason hopes and expectations.
In 2020, they were expected to be a playoff-contending team that probably wasn’t quite good enough to make the postseason. They were exactly that.
This year, they were an improved team who would compete for the postseason but were a class beneath the expected juggernaut Rams.
In the end, they weren’t quite good enough to win the division and ran into a team that was expected by more or less everyone to buzzsaw their way through the NFC.
I am not saying the end of season isn’t extremely disappointing. It was bad.
However, if you fire Kingsbury and hire a new coach and they don’t immediately make a deep playoff run, does that coach get fired?
Perhaps the biggest issue of all is this — people are talking about firing Kingsbury, all while expecting Steve Keim to hire the next coach.
This is the same Keim who would be firing two failed head coaches with rosters he gave them. In what world should he get to hire a third head coach?
Keim enters the final year of his contract. Kingsbury has one year left and team option beyond that.
Because of the highs and the overall year-to-year improvement, they warrant another year. Should they get extensions this offseason? Absolutely not, because of the concerns for both.
The only logical decision to make is to let them work their way through things, prove that they can have a playoff team, avoid a collapse and see growth on the roster.
Anything else is being shortsighted.
Cardinals fans are not entitled to a title. Do they deserve one? Yes.
But winning is hard to sustain in the NFL, Kingbury has won. He has also collapsed, but the highs prove there is something there.
Don’t fire him. Don’t extend him.
2022 becomes criticals for many reasons.
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