Arizona Cardinals’ Kliff Kingsbury gets vote of confidence from owner

For a while at the end of the Arizona Cardinals’ season, speculation surrounded coach Kliff Kingsbury and whether or not he could be fired as the team’s coach after three seasons.

Arizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill appeared to give the Cardinals coach a vote of confidence on Friday in an interview with Arizona Sports 98.7 FM, calling Kingsbury a successful coach who is going to continue to improve.

“I go back to that record and I know people focus on the finish, but we’ve already talked about the factors that contributed to that,” Bidwill said on The Bickley and Marotta Show. “I look at the college coaches who have made the transition from college to the pros and the ones that are successful, and Kliff is, I feel like he’s had an adjustment period, he’s had a few years to adjust and I feel like he’s going to get better and better because I feel like he understands the pro rules and the pro game and the pro speed and everything else much better than he did a couple of years ago.”

More:Kyler Murray statement on Arizona Cardinals contract: ‘Actions speak louder than words’

Kingsbury is 24-24-1 in three regular seasons as Cardinals coach, and 0-1 in the NFL playoffs.

His team went 5-10-1 in 2019, 8-8 in 2020 and 11-6 in the regular season last year, before getting routed by the eventual Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams, 34-11.

The Cardinals got off to an impressive start last season, but struggled down the stretch in losing four of their last five games, leading many to call for Arizona to replace Kingsbury as head coach.