Commanders' strong start doing wonders for Kliff Kingsbury's reputation

Commanders fans shouldn’t get too attached to their new offensive coordinator. With two teams already looking for a new head coach and more likely to follow, Kliff Kingsbury’s stock couldn’t be any higher.

Just look at what he’s done with the team’s rookie quarterback. In nine games, Jayden Daniels has thrown for 1,945 yards with nine touchdowns and just two interceptions. He’s also completing 71.5% of passes, the third-best number in the NFL.

Daniels also owns the league’s fifth-best passer rating (106.7) and the second-best QBR (75.7) which speaks volumes about the man overseeing his development. Under Kingsbury, Daniels has thrown the 19th-most passes (228) of any quarterback with an average of 8.5 yards per attempt, tied with Minnesota’s Sam Darnold for the fourth-best number in the league.

Kingsbury knows quite a bit about quarterbacks, having set 39 school records and seven NCAA FBS records while playing the position from 1998-2002 for Texas Tech. Years later, as head coach of the Red Raiders, he’d help develop Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Buccaneers' Baker Mayfield, although Mayfield didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye with Kingsbury and transferred to Oklahoma after his freshman year.

Kingsbury’s success at Texas Tech helped earn him a job as head coach of the Arizona Cardinals in 2019, something critics will point to as evidence against his future head coaching prospects. 

Thirty-nine-years-old at the time, Kingsbury took over a Cardinals team that had won just three games the year before. It took three years, but with an 11-6 record in 2021, Kingsbury led the team to its first winning record and playoff appearance since 2015.

Unfortunately, the bottom fell out in 2022. While the Cardinals posted a pair of top-10 offenses from 2020-2021, they ranked 22nd in 2022, finishing with a 4-13 record that ultimately cost Kingsbury his job.