Looking Back At Kliff Kingsbury’s Biggest Mistakes

Ignoring His Defense

Kliff Kingsbury loves the offensive side of football.  As a former QB who played under an offensive innovator in Mike Leach, Kingsbury knows as much about designing an offensive attack as any coach in the country.  But there are two sides of the ball and by ignoring that other side of the ball completely, Kingsbury set himself up for failure.

Kingsbury made the mistake of acting like an offensive coordinator despite being the head coach.  Perhaps it was his obsession with running the offense, his lack of trust in his offensive assistants or the poor example set for him by Leach (who is notorious for also ignoring the defense) but Kingsbury was mistaken when he turned a blind eye to what was happening in the defensive meeting rooms.

The perception that Kingsbury didn’t care about defense spread through the locker room where defensive players felt like Kingsbury had no interest in their success.  The result was a lack of confidence in themselves and a lack of performance from this defensive players.

It should not have taken Kingsbury being told by graduating seniors via their exit interviews that he was harming his team by ignoring his defense.  Common sense would suggest that if the results on one side of the ball were dragging the entire program down, the head coach should address the situation first-hand.

But for some reason, it took Kingsbury until 2017 before he showed his defense that he was in their corner.  College football players more closely resemble kids than men, especially mentally which makes the emotional and mental aspect of the game even more important.  And Kingsbury was deficient in nurturing that aspect of his defense for far too long.

Fortunately, that has changed.

"“I feel a big difference on [the defense’s] sideline, knowing that my head coach is for the whole team,” defensive lineman Talor Nunez told ‘The Ringer’ last offseason.  “Everyone’s running to the ball hard. It’s the things people on the outside wouldn’t notice, but on the inside, within our teammates, we can feel that difference.”"

Kingsbury is far from a master motivator but even he should have known that his defensive players would play harder for him if they knew he was in their corner.  Unfortunately, it took until 2017 before Kingsbury started to pay any attention to that side of the ball.

As a result, he cost himself dearly.  That’s not to say that he would have fielded a top-50 defense had he been more involved from the beginning but Tech could have won some close games like the 2016 Arizona State and Oklahoma games if the defense would have been confident enough in itself to respond to adversity during a game.

Kingsbury will always make his money through offensive excellence but he is now acting more like  a true head coach and showing some love to the defense.  One must only hope that revelation did not come too late to make him successful.