When the Arizona Cardinals hired Kliff Kingsbury as their new head coach, they dove headfirst into an experiment that could change the future of the NFL. At first glance, the Kingsbury hire doesn’t look too promising. Kingsbury went 35-40 in six years as the head coach at Texas Tech, with a 1-2 record in bowl games and four losing seasons.

Those facts might be concerning, but it misses the larger point of why Kingsbury was a risk worth taking. He was hired to fix a lifeless NFL passing game that finished dead last in just about every single statistic — and that’s something he can do at a high level.

The middling recruiting classes that Kingsbury brought into Lubbock, Texas, never stopped him from constructing a potent passing offense. While the Big 12 isn’t known for defense, there’s still value in consistently fielding dangerous passing attacks.

In the NFL, Kingsbury will be implementing his modified version of the pass-happy air raid offense, a system that’s been passed down and tinkered with since Hal Mumme brought it to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s.

This will be a rare opportunity for a coach with air raid lineage to run a variation of it at the pro level. To get a better idea of the challenges and benefits of bringing the air raid to the NFL, SB Nation caught up with Mumme and SMU head coach Sonny Dykes — a fellow air raid disciple — to figure out what Kingsbury might be getting himself into.

Hal Mumme on the origins of the air raid and getting guys to buy in

Mumme, who is currently the offensive coordinator of the new XFL team in Dallas, is one of the original creators of the air raid offense. Mumme and Mike Leach, now the head coach at Washington State, implemented the system while they were together at Iowa Wesleyan from 1989-91. When they moved on to Valdosta State together in 1992, the offense really started to take off.

Before 1992, Valdosta State had never made the Division II playoffs. In five seasons at Valdosta State, Mumme and Leach led the Blazers to a 40-17-1 record and two playoff berths. Their ability to quickly turn around the program was due to a lethal passing game that put up unbelievable numbers — especially for Division II. In 1994, Chris Hatcher, their starting quarterback, threw for a whopping 55 touchdowns and won the Harlon Hill Trophy, which goes to the best player in Division II.

For Mumme, the toughest battle he faced when he first started building the air raid was getting the players to buy in — particularly the offensive linemen.

“I think the hardest part about it is probably the offensive linemen. You’re going to have the same amount of offensive linemen whether you’re coaching the NAIA or the NFL,” Mumme said. “For Kliff, the challenge will be getting the older players to buy into this. If they buy into it, then it’s really doable.”

Arizona has a veteran offensive line with four starters who have accrued at least four years in the NFL. According to Football Outsiders, the Cardinals ranked 18th in seconds in between plays last year. There’s a chance they see an uptick in that category under Kingsbury this year.

The biggest question coming into the season is what the Cardinals’ offense will look like.

The air raid is generally thought of as a 10-personnel offense, which means one running back and four wide receivers on the field. However, Mumme stressed that’s not the way people should be thinking about the offense. In fact, Mumme and Leach use a healthy dose of 20 personnel — two running backs — as a part of their offense.

“The four-wide is kind of a misnomer about our offense,” Mumme explained. “Everybody talks about air raid, and they talk about spread, and they kind of confuse the two. If you look at it, a lot of what we do is two-back offense. Even at Washington State if you talk to Coach (Mike) Leach, a lot of their best stuff comes from two-back offense.”

While formations with four wide receivers are a big part of the air raid, the offense still needs to be able to protect against blitzes from the defense.

“It’s important to run [two-back] because you can pick up a seven-man blitz,” Mumme said. “If they’re going to send seven, you can block seven and then your guys have one-on-one situations on the outside — that’s as easy of a throw as you can get.”

Making life easier on the quarterback is the core principle of the air raid. In its truest form, the air raid only uses a handful of passing plays. “Pretty much what we do is five passing plays,” Mumme said. “Four verticals and then mesh. And then Y-cross and Y-sail and the quick game versions of either corner or stick.”

Here’s a brief look at a few of the plays Mumme was talking about:

Four verticals — Four vertical routes down the field.