It’s time to take Kliff Kingsbury serious as a good football coach

The job Kliff Kingsbury has done in 2018, when he has found success despite a number of unforeseen issues that could have derailed his team, proves that he is more than just a pretty face, he’s actually a quality football coach.

From the moment Kliff Kingsbury was handed the reigns to the Texas Tech football program in 2013, the media has had a constant fascination with the first-time head coach.  Certainly, his sense of style, youthful persona and movie star good looks make him a unicorn in the world of college football head coaches because in those ways, he’s unlike anything the game has seen.

But in his sixth year on the job, the now 39-year-old is proving that there’s more to him than just perfectly quaffed hair and a designer five o’clock shadow.  He’s beginning to show that he is also a pretty good football coach.

Certainly, the Kingsbury era has been a bumpy ride at Texas Tech.  Asking a 34-year-old with no head coaching experience at any level to turn around a floundering program and unite a divided fan base would be a tough chore at any school, regardless of classification.

But considering that Kingsbury has been tasked with doing so at Texas Tech, one of the tougher places in the FBS to win because of geographic location, a lack of big-time funding from donors and a mediocre (at best) football tradition to point to, it is easy to see why the former Red Raider QB struggled to a 30-33 record in his first five seasons.

Certainly, Kingsbury has made a number of mistakes as he learned how to run a Big 12 football program on the fly.  But with a competent group of assistant coaches in place for the first time in his tenure, we are finally starting to see why Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt has been so patient with his head coach despite the calls for change from a huge portion of his fan base (this writer included).

This year, Kingsbury has guided his team to a 4-2 start despite losing not one, but two starting quarterbacks to injury.  In fact, the only two games the Red Raiders have lost this year were the two games in which that week’s starting quarterback was knocked out of the game before halftime.

Kingsbury has won Big 12 games at Oklahoma State and TCU while having to rely on his second and third-string quarterbacks on the week-one depth chart.  Fans of OSU and TCU have been quick to try to dismiss the results of those games by pointing out that the 2018 versions of the Cowboys and Frogs are not very good.

While that may be true, absolutely no one outside of the Texas Tech football program predicted the Red Raiders to be any good this year either.  In fact, Tech was picked to finish 8th in the Big 12 preseason poll ahead of only Kansas and Baylor.

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Whether or not Oklahoma State and TCU are as good as they have been in years past, both were significant favorites when they faced Kingsbury’s team.  The Cowboys were 14.5 point favorites on September 22nd and the Frogs entered last night’s contest as 7.5 point favorites.

But despite having to rely on a true freshman QB making his first road start as a collegiate and missing his top two running backs, Kingsbury (and his coaching staff) put together a masterful game plan against Oklahoma State.  Tech unveiled a power running attack that took OSU by surprise as the Red Raiders bullied the home team to the tune of a 41-17 beating.

And last night, Kingsbury found himself hamstrung when his third-string quarterback, who has a very limited grasp of the playbook and is prone to the big turnover, had to take on the Big 12’s second-best scoring defense.

Still, Kingsbury found a way to get just enough out of Jett Duffey to come away with the win.  The game plan against TCU was completely different than it had been for the first five weeks of the season, a sign of a good coach as Kingsbury put Duffey in position to be successful. That was most evident on the 38-yard QB draw that gave the Red Raiders the lead for good in the 4th quarter.

Certainly, this TCU team is a far cry from the best teams the Frogs have produced.  But still, Kingsbury got a win in a game that saw him have to play without his starting QB, his backup QB (McLane Carter was injured on his only series of the game to start the second half), a starting wide receiver (T.J. Vasher left the game early with a back injury) his top running back (Da’Leon Ward carried the ball only 3 times as he remains slowed by a groin injury) his starting left tackle (Travis Bruffy) and his starting center (Paul Stawarz).

But somehow, he coached his team to a win over the legendary Gary Patterson who had his starting QB back from injury and was playing nearly his full compliment of players.  Yet it was Kingsbury who was by far the better coach on the night.

Patterson’s team was sloppy and undisciplined.  TCU turned the ball over three times and put the ball on the turf twice more.  Meanwhile, Texas Tech had only one giveaway on a poorly thrown Duffey pass.

Still many refuse to give Kingsbury credit for what he has done this season.  A writer for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram went so far as to repeatedly belittle Kliff Kingsbury by calling him “Kliffy” and “Coach Bro” in his post-game article.

It seems as if the national media and most fans around the Big 12 are reluctant to admit that the narrative around Kilff Kingsbury is changing.  For years, the easy story to write was the tired take about substance over style.

Those that do not follow the program on a daily basis have made a cheap living on trying to typecast Kingsbury as a jet-setting play boy who is more concerned with his image than with the results on the field.  But those that have truly spent time watching Kingsbury’s career from the beginning know that nothing could be further from the truth.

For all his mistakes, Kingsbury has never given anyone reason to question his dedication to his craft.  Now, it appears that the results may finally be coming to fruition.

Kingsbury has won six of his last eight road games.  In that span, he’s knocked off Mike Gundy, Tom Herman and Gary Patterson, three darlings of the Big 12 coaching fraternity.

Even if the national media remains ignorant to the truth, or choses to ignore it for the sake of preserving their own worn out narratives, there appears to be a new reality.  Kliff Kingsbury is not just another pretty face, he looks like he is a pretty good football coach too.