I understand it's really easy to blame the coach. Nobody has Kliff Kingsbury shirts, Kliff posters on their wall or Kliff lock screen pictures.
So it's easy to imagine a world where you fire Kliff and your favorite player that is sucking suddenly gets better and everything is good. But it's fantasy land.
Kliff isn't perfect, he's far from it. He's screen game is infuriating. His chronic misuse of Rondale Moore is similar to how he ruined Kirk until his last year with us. There is a lack of motion. A lack of play action. RPO's that were a staple of the offense have all but vanished this year. But as annoying as these things can be they aren't why we are losing.
Some of it is roster construction. Particularly Edge rusher. Letting Chandler go was not the problem, both rookies have more sacks and pressures than Chandler Jones playing a 10th of the snaps. The problem was not replacing him sooner. I called for him to be traded before last season but they should have drafted a rusher last year or signed a vet this year. Even if it was just 1 year of Justin Houston.
But mainly it's been players playing well below par and just not doing the basic things right. Things that coaches shouldn't even need to touch on because it's just basic stuff.
Most of that is on Kyler as discussed at length. You just can't be good with a QB playing poorly. Look at Tampa or Green Bay. And while Nuk has certainly improved things he's just papering over the cracks that are there. It's not just Kyler. Beachum has been poor. Green is a corpse. Hudson hasn't been great. The whole running back room has been hot and cold, mainly cold. Special teams are meh. Both Zaven and Simmons have games where they flash and games where they vanish. Golden looks like he retired already.
The only guys I can really say I'm comfortable with are the 5 starting DB's, Allen, Watt, Hernandez, Hump, Nuk and Brown before he was hurt. Everyone else needs to step up their game.
Injuries are playing a big role too. It's not unreasonable to say that we win yesterday if we have Conner, Pugh, Hudson and Hollywood.
Do I think this team plays better with a different HC? Not in the slightest.