TEMPE, Ariz. — The Arizona Cardinals have fired head coach Kliff Kingsbury 10 months after signing him to a contract extension through the 2027 season.
The team also announced that general manager Steve Keim has decided to “step away from his position to focus on his health.”
Like Kingsbury, Keim signed an extension in 2022 that carried his contract through the 2027 season. Keim, however, has been on a medical leave of absence since mid-December.
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Keim joined the Cardinals in 1999 as a college scout and, after years in the personnel department, was promoted to general manager in 2013.
Kingsbury was hired in January 2019, just two months after being fired from Texas Tech, to revive a fledgling offense and struggling organization.
His firing comes one day after the Cardinals lost their season finale 38-13 to the San Francisco 49ers, completing a 4-13 season. Kingsbury finished his Cardinals career with a 28-37-1 record.
He experienced moderate success, leading Arizona to improve its win total in his first three seasons: from 5-10-1 in 2019 to 8-8 in 2020 and then a 2021 season in which the Cards went 11 -6 and they made it to the playoffs. However, Kingsbury’s tenure with the Cardinals was marred by late-season slumps, lackluster results and four years of undisciplined football.
This culminated in last season’s results.
Even though Kingsbury had to coach a team without DeAndre Hopkins for the first six games, without Kyler Murray for the last five games, without tight end Zach Ertz for the last seven games and without four of the five starting offensive linemen for the Cardinals for stretches of this season. , was still relieved of his duties as the Cardinals set out to find their third head coach in the past six years. Despite being around for over 100 years, the Cardinals have never had a head coach last more than six years on the job.
Back-to-back late-season collapses in 2020 and 2021 overshadowed any success the Cardinals had achieved under Kingsbury, but it was also a trend. Since his time at Texas Tech, Kingsbury’s teams had had success early in the season only to trend downward in the second half.
Through 2021, Kingsbury teams were 42-20-1 in the first seven games and 17-44 after that. This season hasn’t had such an impressive start, but things have still been falling apart at the back. Arizona went 3-4 in its first seven games, then went 1-9.
Kingsbury believed that this season would be a reversal of the previous one. He said several times earlier in the season that 2022 could be the opposite of 2021; expect the Cardinals to finish strong after a slow start due in part to not having Hopkins for the first six games because he was suspended for violating NFL rules. performance enhancing drug policy.
Arizona also struggled to win at home, losing six straight in late 2021 and early 2022.
A consistent problem with Kingsbury’s scheme was his inability to adjust.
After a Week 6 loss to the Seahawks, Murray said teams were playing the Cardinals’ offense soft, making them “move the ball methodically.”