“People are gonna come after Kliff Kingsbury. I do not know why more people didn't, he was exceptional this year. He’s been a head coach before, and he knows what he did wrong, and what he did right.”
That was Ryan Leaf’s short take on Kliff’s future in DC when he joined BMitch & Finlay Monday on Media Row in New Orleans, and surely a reason why Dan Quinn did, and said what he did, in building a coaching staff deep enough to withstand eventual losses and possibly promote from within.
We know several other assistants have gotten interviews or requests around the league for promotions, one of those being assistant QB coach David Blough – whom the Commanders blocked from interviewing in certain spots.
An acknowledgement that Kingsbury is staying next year, but is uncertain beyond that, or perhaps other assistants (like QB coach Tavita Pritchard) could be gone soon also?
“You promote from within, build guys up that way. You see Detroit doing something similar right now,” Leaf said. “If you put a good staff together when you're a defensive-minded head coach, you're gonna lose your offensive guys if they're really good. That's why I think more and more you're going to see situations where, like Ben Johnson and Liam Cohen, you go find the offensive coordinator who calls the plays, and therefore, your offensive coordinator can never leave your quarterback that you find.”
Leaf pointed to Tampa, who have lost their offensive coordinator to a head coaching gig in two straight offseasons thanks in part to Baker Mayfield’s resurgence, on a team that has a head coach in Todd Bowles with a defensive pedigree.
That’s Dan Quinn, and looking at his initial 2016 staff in Atlanta, the offensive group had four staffers that have gone on to be head coaches (plus another on the defensive side in recent Jets interim coach Jeff Ulbrich) and a low-level assistant who is now on his second OC job in the NFL.
So, especially in this case, planning for defections is prudent, as is knowing what you’ve got.
“When you have Dan Quinn as the head football coach, the only way to do this and keep it together is pay them head coaching money, but then you bring into question the hierarchy there in the office, and that just can't happen,” Leaf said. “It’s difficult with this game all about offense, quarterbacks, and the head coach. Owners are gonna want to go the route of Liam Coen of Ben Johnson, the offensive play-caller who’s your head coach, and hopefully you find that fit for the franchise quarterback and never have to worry about that again and you can have consistency. But Dan Quinn does a good job with this; he picks good guys to be in those positions, so if and when they lose Kliff, if there's somebody that can be moved up in that spot, great, and if not, he's gonna go out and find a good guy that can do it.”
And to that point of having six head coaches total on his 2016 staff, including himself?
“What Quinn does also is he knows he’s not there just to develop players, he’s there to develop coaches as well, and I think he understands it,” Leaf said. “That's why you have that lineage of all those guys. This offense has like five guys that have called plays before, and he’s smart by having people in place. He was under Pete Carroll and watched Pete develop and empower coaches, and it's just been really, really fun to see.”