Washington Commanders Offensive Coordinator a Serious Candidate for Stanford Job

Stanford football is in the midst of a rebuild and after firing head coach Troy Taylor on Tuesday, it now appears that the rebuild will last even longer. But a list of potential candidates for the job opening have been revealed, and one of the names on the list could provide hope for a better future.

Kliff Kingsbury, the current offensive coordinator for the Washington Commanders, is one of the names being tossed around as a potential replacement. He has recently said that he'd like to return to being a head coach "at some point" and has been a rumored fit for the Cardinal vacancy.

A former college head coach with Texas Tech and a former NFL coach with the Arizona Cardinals, Kingsbury would bring a large sample size of experience.

And one aspect about Kingsbury that could appeal to Stanford is the fact that he has served as a head coach in the recent landscape of football. Kingsbury's final season at Texas Tech was in 2018, the same year that the transfer portal was introduced. While Kingsbury was not a head coach in the college ranks during the transfer portal era for long, he understands what the process is.

After getting fired by the Arizona Cardinals following the 2022 season after four seasons in charge, Kingsbury then went back to the college ranks for a season, working as the senior offensive analyst for USC during the 2023 season.

While his formal title meant that he had a more limited role on staff, he ended up playing a big role in terms of developing Caleb Williams while also helping the program throughout the season, allowing him to really understand the current landscape of college football.

At Texas Tech, he put together a career record of 35-40, winning the Holiday Bowl in his first season in 2013 followed by a Texas Bowl loss in 2015 and a Birmingham Bowl loss in 2017.

Despite limited success as a college head coach, Kingsbury also first got the job when he was just 33-years old, which made him one of the youngest coaches in all of college football. Older and more experienced now, Kingsbury has evolved over the years as a coach and has been able to learn and grow.

One of the best offensive minds in football, Kingsbury would bring a much more enhanced style of play to The Farm if he were to take over. Known for drawing some inspiration from the Air Raid offense in his scheme, Kingsbury's offense is much more of a balanced pro-style, mixing both passing and running plays in a pretty equal way in order to create strong matchups and force the defense to spread out.

With many top programs incorporating a pro-style offense in order to get their players ready for the next level, that could be a good thing for a program like Stanford.

The firing of Taylor puts much more pressure on the program to ensure that it gets the next hire right.

That could mean an interim is tagged for this season to give the program more time to conduct an extensive search, while the hope is that general manager Andrew Luck is able to find a guy who will be there for the long haul and bring sustainable success to The Farm for the foreseeable future.