After many interviews, the Las Vegas Raiders and head coach Antonio Pierce have finally hired their offensive coordinator. In what will be the first opportunity for Pierce to build the team in his image, he chose to hire former Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury.
Kingsbury originally made his name as the offensive coordinator for Texas A&M back in 2012 where he helped lead Johnny Manziel to a Heisman Trophy. The next year he would be hired as the head coach at Texas Tech and would continue running the air raid with future NFL quarterbacks such as Patrick Mahomes and Davis Webb.
Following a 28-37-1 record as the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals where they made the playoffs once in four years, Kingsbury returned to the college game where he was Lincoln Riley’s offensive coordinator at USC. Of course, this put him close to the presumed number-one overall pick, Caleb Williams.
While his stay at USC was a short one, Kingsbury now returns to the NFL with the Raiders. No doubt a great situation for him as he enters an offense that has Davante Adams and a team as a whole that believes it is ready to take the next step under new leadership.
However, with many options, why was Kingsbury the right choice to lead the Raiders offense out of the Josh McDaniels era?