

General Background / Philosophy

Kliff Kingsbury has played and coached under the Air Raid offense since his days of playing quarterback at Texas Tech under The Godfather of the Air Raid, Mike Leach. After a short stint in the NFL, he joined the Houston coaching staff as an offensive quality control coach, and then offensive coordinator under Kevin Sumlin, another Air Raid artist. The young and upcoming coach then followed Sumlin to Texas A&M, where he orchestrated a juggernaut offense that led to a Heisman Trophy for redshirt freshman, Johnny Manziel. The team averaged 44.5 points per game, which attracted the eyes of college programs around the country. His meteoric rise ended with Kingsbury accepting the Texas Tech head coaching job at the ripe age of 33. There, his offense consistently scored in the 40 point range, while utilizing two and three-star prospects in the competitive recruiting hotbed of Texas.



From a schematic standpoint, a former player under Kingsbury at Houston and current Washington State offensive quality control coach, Drew Hollingshead said it best:



“I think the best way to describe our offense is probably that it’s not just an offense. It truly is a philosophy. It’s the simplicity. We don’t have a ton of concepts,” Hollingshead said. “But we believe in being able to rep everything we do, every single day and being better at running it than the defense is at stopping it. Also encompassing that is the way we practice; how it’s structured and the drills that each position group does that directly relate to our offense.”



The real question is how the offense will translate to the NFL. We saw an innovative college coach like Chip Kelly get figured out real quick. Will Kingsbury be able to adapt on a week-to-week basis and have the flexibility to game plan against the ever evolving defenses of the NFL? Well, Chris Brown (@SmartFootball), one of the X's and O's geniuses of Twitter had this to say about Kingsbury’s eagerness to adapt:



“… while Leach famously just runs the same small handful of plays week in, week out, year after year, Kingsbury’s week-to-week approach is much more influenced by his time in the NFL, particularly with the Patriots. Specifically, while in spring and the early part of fall camp, he will focus on the core or base plays. During the season, he adds a lot of opponent specific concepts, plays, formations, motions and shifts; while Leach is just trying to out-execute everyone with simplicity, Kingsbury wants the benefit of the high volume of reps that Leach and the other Air Raiders have by mastering the core concepts, while also making the specific, weekly tweaks, wrinkles and just plain new plays that exploit matchups and keep opponents off balance. … All of this isn’t to say his offense will succeed in the NFL, but I do think it will be interesting to follow how he blends the college Air Raid with a more NFL inspired ‘game plan approach.'”



As Brown said, it’s not a layup that just because he adds these weekly wrinkles that it’s all going to workout in the NFL. However, his eagerness to adapt and add wrinkles based on opposing defenses is a step in the right direction.