Kliff Kingsbury and Steve Keim are no longer with the Arizona Cardinals
The Monday after the regular season concludes is typically known as “Black Monday” around the NFL and in the football world. This is the day where many teams across the league relieve coaches and front office executives of their duties. However, for the Cardinals this “Black Monday” was a grim one. After wrapping up an abysmal season decimated by an abnormally large number of injuries, the Cardinals announced that long-tenured general manager Steve Keim was resigning due to health concerns and that 4th-year head coach Kliff Kingsbury would be relieved of his duties.
— Arizona Cardinals (@AZCardinals) January 9, 2023
In December 2022, news broke that Keim would be taking an indefinite leave of absence from the team due to health concerns, and Monday it was officially announced by the team that he would be stepping away to focus on his health. Keim had been with the Cardinals ever since 1999 when he was hired as a collegiate scout. For many years, Keim worked his way up the personnel department until he was promoted to general manager in 2013.
Kingsbury was hired by the Cardinals during the 2019 offseason. Kingsbury was viewed as the next young offensive mind that would bring the Cardinals to new heights through his “Air-Raid” offense that he co-founded during his college coaching days. Although Kingsbury led the Cards to more and more wins every season, the team kept losing games when it mattered most and was not able to sustain any type of consistency.
After the team announced that they were moving on from their general manager and head coach, owner Michael Bidwill gave a press conference Monday afternoon to go more in-depth on what steps the team will take moving forward and what led to these decisions. Bidwill mentioned that “Kliff is the hardest working coach he has been around and that he wishes him well.”
Bidwell has wasted no time searching for candidates and mentioned how he’d been on and off the phone all day calling executives around the league in search of a new GM and head coach. The Cardinals were 10-2 only 13 months ago and Bidwill said that it’s urgent for the Cardinals to turn things around.
“The focus is to win the NFC West, first and foremost, and then from there to get hot and go to the NFC championship and so on.” Bidwill said.
With the Cards moving on from Keim and Kingsbury, it has left a daunting task for both positions as the Cardinals figure out ways to make it back to the postseason and eventually the Super Bowl, a game the Cardinals haven’t appeared in since 2009. The next GM must figure out which players to re-sign and who to let walk from the team’s 30 impending unrestricted free agents.
The next head coach must unite the players together and develop an identity that the Cardinals can establish for years to come. But for now, the wait is on as the search ensues for the future of the Arizona Cardinal decision-makers.
