And this is a fair point. Good college head coaches are good adminstrators. They have to manage recruiting, practices, and game day decisions. It's similar to being an NFL Head coach, but remove the recruiting duties.
It's common for college head coaches to fail miserably in the NFL because they can't stack their team with a talent advantage like they can in college.
Kliff only has to be concerned with outscheming the other team and developing Rosen. It's a much more narrow job description and only highlights what he is known to be good at.
The national media attacks on this hiring are missing this point entirely. Just like many of them turned the Wilks firing into a race thing, and not a merit based firing. Anyone who even watched a single game of Wilks could see he looked liked he was promoted way over his ability. Total Peter principle.
Yes, I think people get caught up in Kliff's Gosling appearance and don't really know that much about him as a person. He is an introvert who loves gameplanning, scheming, calling plays, developing the QB and other players on offense, and is also a very high character person. Graduation rate of 85% at Tech.
He didn't like cutting corners on academics like you might see with other college coaches who just want to win big. He works extremely long hours, like 3 AM to Midnight. He's not a big time salesman like you need to be on the recruiting trail in college. His personality traits seem way more suited to the NFL than college in my opinion.
Obviously it's important to surround him with good veteran NFL coaches, especially on defense. But I would argue that was also critical with the Rams and McVay. If they didn't give him Wade Phillips, who knows how that would have turned out for them.