Trains are a great option if you need to haul a massive payload to a single destination. When you have to worry about sudden turns or changes in direction, however, they’re a lot less useful. Even stopping a train requires a tremendous amount of time and effort to slow its momentum.
And in an NFL landscape filled with teams that maneuver like fighter jets, Kliff Kingsbury and Josh McDaniels are stuck playing engineer.
Both are capable of handling their business as long as no contingencies arise. If the Cardinals or Raiders simply need to get to a preordained destination with limited resistance from their opponent, they’ll get there. But ask them to change direction and both Arizona and Las Vegas wind up scrambling.
Both have been able to build potent offensive machines and imposing leads on opponents. Neither has been able to adapt once the tide turns against their team. That can mean collapsing after building a 17-0 lead to start a game or an 8-1 record to start the season.
Turning is not an option for Kingsbury or McDaniels. If their target is right in front of them, hell yeah, they’ll get there in record time. If not, well, they’re just gonna hope their opponent is willing to meet them wherever their tracks end.
Even though McDaniels is just halfway through his first regular season with the Raiders, we’ve got years of data from both coaches to illustrate how incapable either coach is of turning things around. McDaniels couldn’t make the Broncos more than the sum of their parts, lost the locker room and lost seven of his last eight games before being fired in 2010. Kingsbury, on the other hand, has lost the magic touch that brought Arizona success early in the year before inevitable fades into oblivion.
Let’s look at how inability to change could leave both unemployed after the 2022 season.
Josh McDaniels: An utter inability to stem in-game momentum
McDaniels’ second stint as an NFL head coach is going more poorly than his first — and he was fired 12 games into his second season with the Denver Broncos. A Las Vegas team in search of its first playoff streak in two decades has instead backslid considerably despite adding veteran stars like Davante Adams and Chandler Jones.
McDaniels’ utter inability to stop streaking opponents has played a major role in the Raiders’ 2-6 start. He’s coached only eight games and has three different losses in which he’s seen 17-0 leads evaporate into the ether. It’s part of a disturbing trend where opponents take over the game for long stretches and McDaniels is left staring into the middle distance as though his Xbox controller has disconnected.
- Week 2: The Arizona Cardinals score 22 straight points in the final nine minutes of regulation and overtime to erase a 20-0 deficit.
- Week 4: The Kansas City Chiefs go on a 24-3 run to turn a 17-0 deficit into a 24-20 lead and a 30-29 win.
- Week 8: The New Orleans Saints, fresh off allowing 42 points to the Cardinals (albeit through entirely too many pick-sixes) hold serve for four quarters in a 24-0 win.
- Week 9: The Jacksonville Jaguars, similarly 2-5 at kickoff, storm back from a 17-0 deficit in a 27-20 win.
So much of McDaniels’ failure is tied to his lack of a Plan B. Adams couldn’t get open against Alontae Taylor in Week 8, so rather than change up the offense and try to scheme him open with fresh routes or pre-snap motion, the Raiders just kept banging their heads against the wall. Derek Carr didn’t lead a single drive beyond midfield that afternoon.
In Week 9, Adams found his stride en route to 146 receiving yards — all of which came in the first half. The Jaguars adjusted by moving tight press coverage on the All-Pro wideout bracketed with dedicated over the top safety help at the expense of leaving other targets open. It worked; Adams had one catch on eight targets for zero yards after halftime.
Without their huckleberry to rely on, the Vegas offense stagnated and failed to branch out. The Raiders gained 63 yards across 25 plays in the second half.
This is the McDaniels experience. He can dial up an impressive top speed but has none of the finesse to handle the tight turns and intense handling an NFL gameplan requires. He can write a beautiful script to start things, but when forced to improvise he chokes under a spotlight. He’s done nothing to show he can fix this as the season wears on; if anything, his inability to adjust has gotten worse.
Kliff Kingsbury's history of last-season fades may have started early
Kingsbury has a modus operandi as an NFL head coach. He exceeds expectations in the first half of the season, then comes crashing back to earth right around the time supermarkets begin putting up Christmas decorations. Between 2020 and 2021 his teams were 13-3 before November 8 and 6-12 after it.
He hasn’t had the chance to prop himself up for a collapse in 2022. Despite the crumbling sands of the NFC around him (NFC East excluded), Kingsbury’s Cardinals are off to a 3-6 start. Their wins came over the Raiders (see above), Carolina Panthers (hopeless) and New Orleans Saints on a night where Andy Dalton threw a red zone interception and two pick-sixes over the course of four very sad first half possessions.
Kyler Murray, fresh contract extension in hand, has regressed badly. While some of his backslide could be attributed to DeAndre Hopkins’ absence while serving a six-game PED suspension, the two are 1-2 together since the All-Pro wideout’s return. Here’s how far Murray has fallen in terms of advanced stats — namely the NFL’s Next Gen Stats model’s expected points added (EPA) and completion percentage over expected (CPOE) metrics:
- Kyler Murray, Weeks 1-9 2021: 0.241 adjusted EPA/play (No. 1 among NFL QBs), 8.6 CPOE (No. 2)
- Kyler Murray, Weeks 1-9 2022: 0.008 adj. EPA/play (22nd), -0.9 CPOE (22nd)
Or, if you’d prefer it in graph form:
There’s a light at the end of this tunnel. Murray has made modest improvements with Hopkins on the field. His performances in Week 7 and Week 9 produced his two highest passer ratings of the year. But they’ve also been the backdrop for costly sacks (nine in his past two games), turnovers (three) and a 14 for 39 success rate (35.9 percent) on third and fourth down. Those aren’t exactly encouraging numbers.
Then you get the added effect of Kingsbury’s late-season slides as teams adjust to his offenses, batter Murray and clamp down on a typically unimpressive run game. The 2021 Cardinals went from scoring 30.8 points per game with Murray behind center the first half of the season to 16.7 over the final seven games of the year once he returned from a midseason injury. In 2020, an offense that scored 29.6 points per game in Weeks 1-10 averaged 20.6 in Weeks 11-17.
This all points toward a very familiar ending — one foretold by a defense that couldn’t protect a 17-14 third quarter lead on Sunday and reinforced by an offense that lacked the arsenal for a fourth quarter shootout. The Cardinals have the talent to hang with the NFC’s top teams but, once again, lack the execution to pull off wins when they matter most.
The upside-down nature of the NFC suggests Arizona’s playoff hopes aren’t squashed yet. Cashing in on what FiveThirtyEight pegs as a six percent chance to make the playoffs will depend on reversing years worth of trends. That’s probably what it’s going to take for Kingsbury to keep his job, even after signing a contract extension last spring.
