And you thought Jim Harbaugh wore out his welcome and burned bridges on his way out of town.
Lane Kiffin has carpet-bombed his previous stops, be it in the NFL with the Oakland Raiders or in college with Tennessee and USC. And yet, here he is, a “front-runner” for the San Francisco 49ers' offensive coordinator job under new coach Jim Tomsula, according to ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter.
Other names mentioned as candidates include Rob Chudzinski, Mike Shanahan and Marc Trestman.
In one sense, Kiffin to Santa Clara makes all the sense in the world. In another, Niners fans should take Geena Davis' advice in “The Fly” and be afraid. Be very afraid.
Although Kiffin’s offensive mind is ahead of the curve and the Niners need someone to get Colin Kaepernick going, the baggage that Kiffin brings may outweigh the positives.
As Alabama’s offensive coordinator last season, the Crimson Tide went 12-2 and had the No. 17 total offense in the country, averaging 484.5 yards per game. Quarterback Blake Sims, whose 88.5 Total Quarterback Ranking was second nationally entering the playoffs, passed for 3,487 yards with 28 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Derrick Henry, meanwhile, rushed for 990 yards, and T.J. Yeldon had 979 rushing yards.
Yes, Kiffin has always been about an explosive passing attack, which sounds good on the surface, but the Niners’ personnel is better suited for a power running game. So how would Tomsula, an eight-year defensive line coach who said the team’s schemes would be dictated by personnel, reconcile such a philosophical flip, especially if players balked?
Besides, for what it’s worth, Kiffin, who has been with Nick Saban for one year, said in December he would be back in Tuscaloosa next year.
“Yes. Definitely,” Kiffin said before the Tide’s playoff loss to eventual national champ Ohio State. “I think we’ve still got a lot of stuff we can do better. We’ll obviously be working with a new quarterback, and that will be exciting. We’ve done that before.
“To me, that’s always exciting, the unknown.”
Throughout his career, which has been described by observers as unfailingly falling forward, Kiffin has uttered similar bromides -- even if every stay ended badly.
Then again, the realist might counter, everything ends badly. Otherwise, it would not end, right?
But Kiffin, as noted above, always seems to have a nuclear finish.
At USC, after going 28-15, he was pulled off the team bus and essentially fired on the tarmac at LAX in the middle of the night after returning from a loss at Arizona State in 2013.
At Tennessee, after a star-crossed 7-6 season in 2009, Kiffin resigned to take the USC gig, setting off wild protests and eliciting death threats in Knoxville.
But it is his exit from Oakland that remains the standard-bearer.
Think Al Davis and overhead projector.
The Sept. 30, 2008, presser featured Davis reading a three-page letter he sent to Kiffin warning him some two weeks earlier about staying in line and featured, besides the projector, an intermission.
Davis railed against young “Lance” (hey, that’s what Davis called him in his introductory presser), saying Kiffin engaged in “what I would call the propaganda, the lying that had been going on for weeks and months and a year and time.
“I think he conned me. I think he conned all you people.”
Kiffin, Davis claimed, was going after the Arkansas job while employed by the Raiders.
Niners CEO Jed York’s mantra has become winning with class. So why, again, would the 49ers want to court such dysfunction?
Then again, it’s not like they’ve been the model of consistency or decorum of late, either.