The Arizona Cardinals should hire Frank Reich to offer a fresh new perspective to the team’s struggling “Air Raid” offense.
Heading into the season, the strength of the Arizona Cardinals was supposed to be the offense. After all, the club’s front office spent most of the offseason adding pieces to a scoring attack that was already loaded with talent.
Through the first nine weeks of the current campaign, the Cards offensive unit has been consistently inconsistent. Much of the blame has been directed at Kliff Kingsbury, the team’s fourth-year head coach. In fact, a large contingent of Cardinals fans believe that Kingsbury should be handed his walking papers.
Perhaps Arizona general manager Steve Keim doesn’t have to be so drastic. Letting go of Kingsbury with eight games still to play would, in essence, be giving up. Would it be more sensible to bring in an experienced assistant who could help Kingsbury get the offense out of it’s season-long funk?
Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury could use help with offense
On Monday, the Indianapolis Colts decided to part ways with fifth-year head coach Frank Reich. The club had stumbled to a 3-5-1 record, and Colts owner Jim Irsay had seen enough.
While Reich may have struggled as Indy’s head man, the 60-year old’s reputation as an offensive guru remains intact. Ironically, the former quarterback was a wide receivers coach for the Cards on Ken Whisenhunt’s staff back in 2012. Would Keim consider bringing Reich back to the desert as a consultant for the 43-year-old Kingsbury?
One year before he was hired to coach the Colts, Reich served as the offensive coordinator for the NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles. That was back in 2017, when his unit racked up an impressive 457 points, and went on to outscore the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Eagles head coach Doug Pederson called the plays, but many observers in the Philly area believed that Reich was the main reason for the offense’s success.
Reich, if hired by the Cardinals, would likely assume the same role he had with Philadelphia. For the past four seasons, the squad has operated without an offensive coordinator on the coaching staff. It may be time for Kingsbury to put aside his ego and allow Keim to hire a coach like Reich who can help him get the Arizona offense back on track.
Kingsbury has had nine weeks to right the ship, and nothing has worked. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The addition of Reich to the Cards coaching staff, and perhaps an offensive turnaround, could be just a phone call away.