In 2018, the Arizona Cardinals put up one of the most pathetic sustained offensive performances in NFL history. They finished last in the league in offensive DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average), Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted efficiency metric. They finished last in the NFL in the first half of games, in the second half of games. They had the worst offensive DVOA in the NFL both on the road and at home. No team was worse when behind in a game, and on those blissful and exceedingly rare occasions when they had a lead, they were last in offensive DVOA then, as well. They finished last when their quarterback was operating out of the shotgun formation, and next-to-last when their quarterback was working under center.
Their quarterback, rookie first-round pick Josh Rosen, put up the single worst season in the history of FO’s other primary efficiency metric, DYAR (Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement). While DVOA is a play-to-play measurement of efficiency (or not), DYAR is cumulative. Football Outsiders has published data for every snap in every season going back to 1986, and no quarterback has ever had a worse DYAR through a season than Rosen’s 1,145. This essentially means that, adjusted for situation and opponent, Rosen was a liability through the season to the tune of 1.145 yards under the league average. Not 1.145 yards behind Patrick Mahomes, but 1,145 yards under the league average.
So, it was not a surprise when head coach Steve Wilks was fired after the season. Offensive coordiantor Mike McCoy had already been fired halfway through the season, and interim offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich went to Tampa to work once again with Bruce Arians, his coaching mentor. In their place came Kliff Kingsbury, the Air-Raid wunderkind who had a hand in the collegiate development of everybody from Mahomes to Baker Mayfield to Johnny Manziel (ahem, the college version) to Case Keenum, and on and on.
There was some suspicion that Kingsbury could take his concepts to the NFL and win, though. Kingsbury’s version of the Air Raid was typical in that it was a high-passing, high-volume offense. With a ton of “10” personnel (one running back, no tight ends, four receivers), and over six seasons with Kingsbury as their head coach from 2013 through 2018, the Texas Tech Red Raiders threw over 3,600 passes. Only Mike Leach’s Washington State Cougars threw more often. Kingsbury presided over offenses that ran over 6,000 total plays — only Baylor and Clemson ran more.
Coaches who come from college insistent on running their old stuff and refusing to adapt to the NFL’s realities have always been in for a rude awakening. And through the first four weeks of the 2019 season, Kingsbury, and his able lieutenant Kyler Murray, the Texas A&M and Oklahoma alum selected first overall in the 2019 draft, seemed to be on that same pace. Per Sharp Football Stats, the Cardinals ran “10” personnel on 59% of their plays. This was by far the highest rate in the league over that time; the Seahawks ranked second with 11% of their plays out of “10” personnel, and eight teams didn’t run a single play out of that personnel.
Murray wasn’t really helped by the packages, either — Arizona threw the ball on 76% of their plays, and Murray completed 69 of 108 passes for a 6.4 yards per attempt average, one touchdown, two interceptions, 13 sacks, and a quarterback rating of 77.4.
This was not sustainable. Not with a receiver group Murray was still getting familiar with, a sub-par offensive line, and a running game that had yet to become what it would become. Plays like this may work in those 54-45 Big 12 After Dark pointfests, but the NFL has generally had better answers.
“I think the biggest takeaway is there’s no kind of throwaway plays in the NFL,” Kingsbury said back in early October. “In college, you may have 85, 90 snaps. There’s a handful that are kind of throwaways and you look back at them and [say], ‘Hey, that’s all right that there were five plays that maybe we didn’t have the best call on and it didn’t work out.’
However, an interesting thing happened on the way to Kingsbury’s NFL irrelevance. Actually, several things. FO’s Aaron Schatz recently pointed out that since Week 4, the Cardinals rank third in Offensive DVOA, behind only Dallas and Baltimore.
Blink once, blink twice? Yes, I know. That is not a typo.
What changed? Personnel diversity, that’s what.
From Week 5 through Week 8, the Cardinals turned away from “10” personnel, running it just 23% of the time, while loading up on “11” personnel (one running back, one right end, three receivers) on 45% of their snaps, and “12” personnel (one running back, two tight ends, two receivers) on 19%. Through the first four weeks of the season, Murray completed 62.7% of his passes overall for 1,071 yards, four touchdowns, four interceptions, 20 sacks, and a quarterback rating of 78.8. From Weeks 5-8, Murray completed 65% of his passes for 917 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions, five sacks, and a quarterback rating of 95.5.
And then, from Weeks 9-11 (Arizona had a Week 12 bye), Murray really started to make things happen. Now used to more balanced personnel sets against NFL defenses, Murray completed 67.9% of his passes for 715 yards, seven touchdowns, one interception, nine sacks, and a quarterback rating of 106.7. This time period included two close losses to the 49ers and their top-tier defense in which Murray not only became the only quarterback to post a passer rating over 100 against San Francisco, he did so twice.
Now, teams were not only having to deal with Murray’s impressive velocity and accuracy as a passer with more interesting formations (as on this 88-yard touchdown pass to receiver Andy Isabella in Week 9, with tight end Maxx Williams and running back Kenyan Drake in the backfield)…
…but also, runs like this 22-yard touchdown out of “11” personnel, where the potential passing and rushing elements are more blurred.
This also brings up the element of play-action, where — over the Cardinals’ last three games — Murray has completed 71.1% of his passes for 341 yards, 9.0 yards per attempt, five touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 127.3. Over that three-game stretch, only Lamar Jackson and Russell Wilson have higher passer ratings, but no quarterback has thrown for more touchdowns when using play-action.
“I think it gives defenses more to prepare for,” receiver Larry Fitzgerald said in late October of Kingsbury’s switch-ups. “You can’t just say, ‘Look, this is the personnel they’re always going to be in. They run it always out of this personnel or they throw it always out of that personnel.’
“I think he looks at all those tendencies and he wants to make sure he’s breaking those tendencies week in and week out, because defenses are so good now in the National Football League in terms of matching up with your personnel and doing things to try and take away your best plays. You have to be able to mix it up. You have to be able to do things to get people off the trail.”
Kingsbury agreed in a way that intimated it was never going to be a “10” personnel force-feed all season long.
“As we’ve become more comfortable with our personnel and they’ve become more comfortable with how we coach and how we install and how we operate, I think that’s what you’re seeing,” he concluded. “We’re playing some really good defenses coming up, so we’re going to have to tighten things up and continue to be creative and put those guys in positions to be successful.”
It’s working exceedingly well, and in a league where offensive play-designers generally don’t change their formational philosophies to this degree — especially in their first seasons at this level — Kingsbury’s ability to not only change things on the fly, but to keep the changes coming in ways that are tailored to his personnel — is one of the more interesting and impressive stories of the 2019 season.
