Cardinals Kingsbury could lure LA Rams HC McVay back for 2023

The LA Rams have way too much on head coach Sean McVay’s plate. It’s not a new concept, as we have pointed that out on an almost annual basis. The reception by the majority of commenters, whenever we have done so, has been… pretty harsh. But it’s a simple rule of any organization. If you want to be effective at what you do in the organization after a promotion, you’ve got to stop doing everything that you used to do in your last role.

For head coach Sean McVay, the insistence that he, and he alone, had to call the offensive plays was simply too much. The reason is simple. If McVay had effectively delegated that responsibility, he would have added the additional controls of oversight, feedback, collaboration, and ultimately, the right to fire the offensive coordinator if the outcome did not meet expectations.

The LA Rams offense was not good in 2022. And so, is part of the enigma over Sean McVay’s indecision been his own doubts as to the performance of the Rams offense? Is he, in some small way, sending himself into some self-inflicted exile because the offense was not good?

Hmmm…

Delegate that OC role to a trusted friend

The LA Rams had a small part in the Arizona Cardinals’ firing of their head coach Kliff Kingsbury. It was the LA Rams who denied the Cardinals of advancing in the NFL Playoffs at the peak of their performance. But even the Cardinals’ best was not good enough to overcome the LA Rams.

Now, the Cardinals will start over once more. The Kliff Kingsbury-Kyler Murray experiment in the NFL is over, and that creates an opportunity for the LA Rams.

The fact is that Kingsbury was not bad at all aspects of a football team. He is a solid offensive mind, but was tasked with babysitting and trying to get the most out of their starting quarterback Kyler Murray, a quarterback I held little respect for after he refused to take the field in the Wildcard Round of the NFL Playoffs, in a loss to the LA Rams. The Arizona Cardinals then doubled down by extending Murray to a very lucrative contract, a move I likened to: ‘the Arizona Cardinals have just performed the NFL equivalent of giving a candy bar to a screaming child at the checkout counter,‘ with the expected results.

His firing is a surprise to some:

But this does create an opportunity for the LA Rams to bring in Kliff Kingsbury as the new offensive coordinator, develop a working plan to phase the offensive play calls to him over the course of 2023, and offload some of the tremendous stress and long hours aspects of head coach Sean McVay’s role with the LA Rams.

Much like former LA Rams QB Jared Goff’s performance was buoyed by the offense designed by HC Sean McVay, Cardinals QB Kyler Murray’s performance has been buoyed by the offense designed by Cardinals HC Kliff Kingsbury.  McVay and Kingsbury are friends. Kingsbury is very familiar with the NFC West. And best of all, dangling the option of hiring Kingsbury may be just enough to lure Sean McVay back to the captain’s chair for one more run at the Lombardi.