We get the breaking news that Kliff Kingsbury is staying with the Commanders, and this is HUGE news for Jayden Daniels and the offense.
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00:00Breaking sports news concerning the commanders just in the last few minutes.
00:03Jordan Schultz, who's the NFL inside guy for Fox Sports FS1, reporting that
00:08Cliff Kingsbury will be staying put as the offensive coordinator in Washington,
00:14despite some interest this off season from New Orleans Saints, some of the
00:17other teams looking for new head coaches.
00:20Uh, Schultz reporting that Cliff Kingsbury, at least for now, isn't going
00:24anywhere, will return for a second year as the OC in Washington.
00:28Remember, he did sign a three-year contract when he joined
00:31the commanders last off season.
00:33So that's your breaking sports news.
00:35Good news for commanders fans here in the fan.
00:37That's about as good an update as we could ask for.
00:40And frankly, that's about the best thing Earl Forsey's told us in a breaking
00:44news on the commanders in a long, long time, Cliff Kingsbury, you can make the
00:49case, was the second most valuable member of the organization behind
00:53Jaden Daniels this year.
00:54He designed the offense that worked and hummed.
00:57He made Daniel's life better, just like Daniels improved everything that
01:01Cliff called and made him write a bunch.
01:04And when you hire Dan Quinn, which ended up working very well in year
01:07one, establishing the culture leader of men, brotherhood bits, all that stuff.
01:13The risk is your offensive coordinator becomes the hot commodity and walks,
01:18and they should now get at least two years out of Cliff Kingsbury
01:22with him deciding to stay.
01:24And they lucked out in this regard.
01:26He told all teams at the start of the playoffs, I will not be interviewing
01:31until we are eliminated or we win the Superbowl in our season ends, right?
01:35Everyone else kept moving.
01:37They were in a rush.
01:39You, you, you can't potentially get left holding the bag.
01:42What happens if Kingsbury decides he's not going to leave Washington and you
01:46were waiting on him, so you didn't get Liam Cohen or Ben Johnson or whoever
01:50else you really like, there's only one opening left.
01:53It's probably the worst overall opening.
01:55The saints who have no quarterback, the saints who have the worst salary
01:58cap situation they have reached out to and wanted to talk to Cliff Kingsbury.
02:03I was told this morning, he was considering as of yesterday, at
02:06least doing the interview and seeing what came of it, but he decided he did
02:09not want to interview with the saints and he is staying put, this is a massive
02:13development and a huge deal for the commander.
02:16Yeah.
02:16He gets to keep making head coach money based on his deal from Arizona.
02:20Plus his coordinator money in a great situation.
02:22Yeah.
02:22Remind people on that element of this from the card.
02:24So I think that's the essential thing.
02:26It's something I didn't quite grasp when he was hired and, and it's kind
02:30of come clear to me, uh, down the stretch.
02:32So he signed a, a, an extension with the Arizona Cardinals that pays
02:35him through, I believe 20, 27, 28, 28, right?
02:38He's got three seasons after this, where he still gets paid.
02:40So he gets to be very, very choosy.
02:42In other words, he's still getting his head coach money and he's got
02:46the responsibility of a coordinator.
02:47Now that doesn't mean he gets to slouch off.
02:49He gets to work at three o'clock in the morning, but you don't have the
02:51full team panoramic to worry about, even though I think his role as
02:55offensive coordinator was almost coordinator plus where it's like, Hey,
02:58Cliff score, but not too fast score and move the ball, but it's got to
03:01take at least 10 plays in seven minutes off the clock, even though we're
03:04tempoing this and that and whatever.
03:06So the thing that I am, I have hammered, I don't know how
03:09strongly you feel about it.
03:10I get the sense, not as much as me, the, I need as much continuity as
03:14possible for my rookie quarterback.
03:16Now he's no longer rookie.
03:17He finishes first year.
03:18The whole reason I hated the Quinn hire.
03:19What do you mean?
03:20I don't agree.
03:20Well, to me, like I don't want, I think the challenge is so great and so
03:24difficult for, for guys to just succeed in the NFL, that changing horses
03:29midstream, even if it's just the same voice within the building, even if
03:31they'd elevated, uh, you know, uh, elevated Johnson, the past game
03:36coordinator that they got from Philly or moved David Blau up the ranks
03:39or to be at a Pritchard or whatever.
03:41I think the same voices, everybody's same at the table as much as
03:45humanly possible to keep everything.
03:47Equal as defenses now adjust for you.
03:49When the challenge becomes that much greater with the target on your back,
03:52instead of people seeing you for the first time, changing OCS and everything
03:55else that goes with it, I think is you're just, you're just, you put
03:58another hurdle in front of somebody where this, this thing is already
04:00so damn hard as it is.
04:01Yeah.
04:01The best way to start your quarterback's development is to change
04:05offenses frequently early in their career or to change voices in their head.
04:10Randy Orton style.
04:11I hear voices in my head.
04:13Rainy knows all about that.
04:15You, you need that continuity early on.
04:18I'm going to be worried and upset next off season when they lose
04:23Cliff Kingsbury and they go to Brian Johnson, who called plays for the
04:27Eagles and was run out of Philadelphia.
04:29And hopefully he'll be really good in that role.
04:31If that's who they go to, the guy I'm actually really intrigued by is
04:33David Blau, who supposedly designed some of the concepts that work this
04:37year, including the touchdown, a crowder to beat the Eagles on a play
04:41that he liked from his days playing in the league recently.
04:44Like he is a super interesting name to monitor.
04:47I also think there's a possibility.
04:48And Quinn talked about this.
04:50So did Peter's yesterday in their presser.
04:52You could lose a guy like David Blau to be a pass game
04:54coordinator somewhere this year.
04:56You could lose a guy like David Blau to be an offensive coordinator.
05:00Like I'm surprised Ben Johnson as an example, who hired a 28 year old
05:03random dude from Denver to be his OC, like why Blau wouldn't have
05:07been maybe of interest there.
05:09But it's not like these guys can't be picked off by other organizations.
05:13So it's possible that Kingsbury won't have all of Richard Johnson
05:18and Blau in the building in September of next year, right?
05:22And then he walks and maybe one or two of those guys is back.
05:25And when he goes, takes, I'm just making this up, but he takes the
05:28head coaching job next year with the giants, let's say who have the
05:31number one pick and are taking a quarterback and he brings Brian
05:34Johnson with him to be his offensive coordinator and maybe his play
05:37caller, maybe he'll call plays.
05:39So now two of those guys are in New York, but Blau's in Chicago.
05:43And if all of a sudden it's like, well, we had all these guys, but
05:46they, they leave in bunches, right?
05:48So that's my concern.
05:49Those are my nerves.
05:49That's my anxiety.
05:50But to at least have two years without rocking the boat majorly,
05:55it's such a big deal.
05:57Like I am elated by this news.
06:00This is awesome to me now, not surprising a month ago, I would
06:05have been a little bit surprised, but you and I have talked about this a lot.
06:07I've said all along really the last several weeks, I thought Cliff was
06:11the moment he told teams I'm not interviewing until after the season
06:14ends, that is a tell about your aggressiveness, your interest, your
06:19desperation, right?
06:21That that's the opposite of, I need a head coaching job.
06:24Cologne.
06:24That's a stay away from me for now thing.
06:27Joe witt didn't do that.
06:28I'm not knocking him.
06:29I have no problem with what he did, but Joe witt went and interviewed with
06:32the jets in the middle of the playoffs.
06:33You know why?
06:34Because he's never been a head coach before because he hasn't gotten many
06:36interviews because he's not making head coach salaried money for the next
06:39three years and he wants a head coaching job.
06:42Cliffs King Kingsbury was one of the few guys.
06:45You don't see that that often.
06:46Do you remember other guys?
06:47I'm sure they've done it, but not here.
06:49Certainly we've said, I will not be accepting interviews until the
06:53playoffs are over, AKA until all the openings are mostly filled
06:57because they don't wait.
06:58Teams don't wait.
06:58Yeah.
06:59You're already saying there's maybe only one or two jobs I would take anyway,
07:03but I'm going to wait until after most jobs are, you're all, but taking
07:07yourself out of the running job.
07:09That's the worst one to offer people is left, right?
07:11Yeah.
07:11I was wrong about this.
07:12I thought that the, the iron was hot and even with his backdrop of the
07:16Arizona money coming his way.
07:18And, uh, you know, you just never know what's going to happen.
07:21Look at Bobby Slowick in Houston for goodness sake, went from darling of the
07:24league, getting head coaching interviews to, eh, we're not so sure about that guy
07:27anymore.
07:28So I thought that he would go just cause you're a competitor at that level, but I
07:32was wrong.
07:32And he, once he made that announcement, I think you're right.
07:34That was kind of the writing on the wall, even though he had a press
07:36conference, he said, yeah, some, they didn't shut down head coach.
07:39Talk.
07:40He wants to be a coach.
07:41He wants to do it.
07:41He has acknowledged his body's time.
07:43I think the fact though, you started with this and it's so true.
07:46He makes, I believe it's three straight years from now, if he wanted to head
07:52coaching money and he double dips as a coordinator, if you take a head coaching
07:57job, you give up the head coaching money from Arizona.
08:01So he is, I'm just making up numbers, but let's say potentially he's making,
08:05you know, six or 7 million per year from the Cardinals.
08:09And then he's making another one, one and a half in Washington.
08:13You would have to go get a job for like $10 million a year to be getting a
08:17sizable raise than what you're making right now, which I think you'd be asking
08:22for to leave a good situation, less stress, worse quality of life in terms of
08:28the next job, more hours, more pressure, more press conferences, a lot of the
08:32stuff he doesn't love.
08:33You get to do all the stuff you like very little of the stuff you don't like.
08:37And you're working with maybe a top five or seven quarterback in the NFL moving
08:40forward right now is going to make you look smarter and better than you are.
08:45I'm going to give all that up so that I can go fix a bad situation, make equal
08:50money to maybe fail.
08:52Oh, by the way.
08:53And if I do, I'll never get a head coaching job again.
08:55So he needs to take a great job.
08:58He needs to wait.
08:58Like, let's say the Bengals next year, lose enough games that either they don't
09:04make the playoffs or they're one and done in the playoffs, they're a wildcard team
09:07and they lose in the first round and they blow out Zach Taylor.
09:10Now Kingsbury is a hot candidate after two straight good years of offense with
09:14Daniels and you get to go be Joe Burrows, head coach in Cincinnati.
09:18You make the jump, right?
09:20If the bills fire, um, Sean McDermott after next season, because they don't
09:26get to the super bowl or whatever.
09:28Now you get to go coach Josh Allen.
09:29Like those are the types of jobs when you're getting the money coming in that
09:32he has, plus you have Daniels who now you feel like is special that it's going to
09:37take to pry him away.
09:38In my opinion.
09:38Yeah.
09:39It's not, it's not the Raiders, whatever they are.
09:41It's not the saints disaster.
09:42As you said, that's one of the worst situations.
09:44It's great city and town, but that organization kind of.
09:48Mortgage the future a bunch of times.
09:50And now the bills do right where they're, they have not much talent.
09:53Everybody's old.
09:54The roster stinks and they're in salary cap hell.
09:56That's not a great place to coach right now.
09:58You know what job I was told?
10:00I had heard two jobs that were interesting to keep an eye on for Kingsbury.
10:04And this is probably like six weeks ago.
10:07One was Jacksonville.
10:09I'm guessing Trevor Lawrence, maybe you liked him a lot coming
10:12out or something.
10:13I don't know.
10:13But this person told me that he might go, he might want that Jacksonville job.
10:19The other was interesting because I didn't think it was ever going to be
10:21open, especially when they ended up making the playoffs.
10:23But I had this conversation with a few weeks left in the year, the
10:27bucks with Mayfield, who I don't think he coached in college.
10:32Right.
10:32I thought he did.
10:33Didn't he?
10:33Was he at Texas tech before he went to Oklahoma?
10:35Maybe it would have actually.
10:36Did he cross to the crossover?
10:37Yeah, maybe they did, but regardless, he was linked to the bucks and maybe
10:41have an interest with Mayfield and calling plays and being head coach there.
10:45Now, obviously they got right.
10:46Bowles again, did a pretty good job and was hanging around, but there
10:49were like rumors, maybe that.
10:50Who knows if he retired or they tried to move on to Liam Cohen or whatever, that
10:54maybe Kingsbury could get interviews there, but as soon as Jacksonville hired
10:59Cohen, Tampa didn't open and that the open season, the vacancies and the
11:04openings were what they were.
11:06It felt to me like Chicago was a good job that he might take.
11:11Otherwise I didn't really see it.
11:12Like, unless he loves Las Vegas and he wants to live in Nevada.
11:15And I just don't know enough about cliff Kingsbury.
11:18That wasn't that great of a job.
11:19Like, where are you going, man?
11:21Cause it wasn't a great slate of openings.
11:23He did coach Mayfield at Texas tech for a year, by the way.
11:25Um, I looked that up, but yeah, I mean, as you look at the landscape,
11:28cause it was right before Kyler.
11:29That's right.
11:30Yeah.
11:30You look at the landscape and you look at the different options.
11:33And I was talking about this with rookie quarterbacks.
11:35You're usually, if you're drafted the top five or six or seven or even 10, you're
11:39usually not going to a place.
11:40That's great.
11:41The rare exceptions have been Ben Roethlisberger going to an excellent
11:44organization in Pittsburgh, Flacco first round pick going to Baltimore.
11:47They were always really good.
11:48My home's going to a perennial playoff team in, in, uh, in Kansas city.
11:52So it's usually, Hey man, everything's broken.
11:55Could you fix it all?
11:56And kind of the similar deal with a head coach, right?
11:58Where you're inheriting someone else's mess and a general manager that, you
12:02know, is, is kind of, you know, save their gig at the same time by
12:05trying to get a shiny new toy.
12:06So it would have to be a more perfect situation.
12:09The thing that I was wrong about more than Ron DeVere star more so than
12:12anything else was these guys and their unbelievable ego, competitive, whatever.
12:21There's such alphas they're different than you and I is they would look at a
12:24situation and I would go, man, that's broken.
12:26And they'd go, that's just a challenge.
12:27That's just something I'm going to overcome.
12:29I'm I'm so good at this that I'll be able to be the one that fixes it.
12:33And I thought that would win, but this was a smart play by
12:36him, to be honest with you.
12:37Totally.
12:37Uh, or again, you're, you're, it's probably easy.
12:39You're making more money than 99% of these first-time head coaches.
12:43Cause you got your OC salary, probably one hired paid guys,
12:46plus your extension from Arizona.
12:48I bet he's not making more than the guys getting hired this year.
12:50Cause the money's just jumped so much.
12:52I mean, you got to go back to four years ago, probably, you know, he's starting
12:56from a, well, the extension was then, but his salary was even years before that.
13:02But regardless, the point is you're making awesome money to do way less work
13:06and have a way more enjoyable lifestyle.
13:09If it's true, what I've been told that he doesn't really enjoy like the press
13:12conference media relationship, part of being a head coach, he just wants to coach
13:16ball well, then an OC is a good thing for you, but he's acknowledged he
13:20doesn't want to be a head coach again.
13:21And maybe that happens in a year.
13:23Let's open up the phones.
13:24Want to get your reactions to this news?
13:26It's huge.
13:26Cliff Kingsbury is coming back according to Fox sports.
13:30He will not be taking an interview with the saints.
13:34That is the only opening left.
13:36So barring something unforeseen and stunning Kingsbury is going to have a
13:40second season with Jaden Daniels, which in addition to just making life easier
13:45on Daniels and the continuity that comes with the coach play caller relationship
13:50for year two, I think it's significant because it gives Washington one more
13:54year to prepare whoever under him, hopefully is going to take over for him.
13:58If he were to walk likely next season, which you'd have to imagine is a real
14:02possibility after the way things trended this year.