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By Calvin Watkins 6h ago
Jon Kitna has always brought people together.
Kitna first endeared himself to Dak Prescott just after Prescott arrived in the NFL in 2016. Kitna was asked to speak to the team’s rookies. He told them about told his faith in God, playing 14 years in the NFL and treating people with respect and kindness.
Roy Williams met Kitna a decade earlier in 2006 as a Detroit Lions wide receiver. Kitna, according to Williams, talked to everyone. Regardless of your religion, the color of your skin, rich, poor, middle class; he connected.
“He’s a likable guy,” Williams said. “He’s got a little Hershey syrup in him, little chocolate flavor in him a little bit. He can relate to the brothers. Kitna is the only guy that relates to everyone in the locker room, and everybody likes him. When I was in Detroit, Kitna was playing spades, we had spades partners, he was always talking to everybody.”
Jason Garrett knew of Kitna from his own time as a backup quarterback in the NFL. He got to know Kitna better in 2010, when Garrett was the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator. He was impressed by Kitna’s attention to detail and how Kitna understood the intricacies of every position on the field. When Kitna took over for an injured Tony Romo in the 2010 season, the locker room wasn’t concerned. There was a feeling that Kitna could help the Cowboys survive without their starting quarterback. It proved to be correct: Kitna went 4-5 during Romo’s absence. He didn’t just do it with his mind, though, but through how he held the locker room together.
“Kitna has an amazing way with people,” Garrett said. “He’s able to connect with lots of different kind of people, young and old, offense (and) defense. He just had that way about him when he was playing. And I think that really served him well throughout his playing career.”
Nobody knows what, exactly, it is. It’s just something about his persona, or maybe his spirit that draws people to him.
So when Garrett promoted Kellen Moore to offensive coordinator, the Cowboys head coach sought to replace him with a quarterbacks coach with a high football IQ and the personality to connect with people. More than that, he wanted to improve communication within the offensive meeting rooms at The Star. Who better than Jon Kitna?
Kitna has never coached a single game at the NFL level. Not only that, he’s never even coached above the high school level. And his OC, Moore, is 29 years old.
The Cowboys have never been averse to youth movements. Garrett was 41 when he took over as offensive coordinator in 2007. Norv Turner was 34 when he became Jimmy Johnson’s offensive coordinator in 1991. Tom Landry was 36 when he coached his first game with the Cowboys in 1960.
But this a new level of inexperience, one in line with an evolving league in which younger head coaches like the Rams’ 31-year-old Sean McVay and the Bengals’ 36-year-old Zac Taylor are becoming the norm.
All eyes in Dallas will be on Moore, both for his age and his new title. But one of the biggest keys to making it work will be Kitna. People outside The Star might see a gambit. But to those who know him, it makes all the sense in the world. [HR][/HR]
Last winter, Mike Martz was named head coach of the San Diego Fleet of the now-defunct Alliance of American Football. When Martz was looking for an offensive coordinator, the only man he called was Kitna. It ultimately didn’t reach fruition: The Cowboys poached Kitna before he could coach a single game for the Fleet.
It’s just as well, Martz supposes.
“I knew he would be in the NFL,” Martz said. “He had a number of opportunities to get in the NFL but his kids were playing high school football. That’s where he belongs, (in the NFL,) no question. He’s going to be a head coach in the league someday.”
The first time Martz saw Kitna was in 2000 when he was coaching his second game for the then-St. Louis Rams. Martz had future Hall of Famers Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk on his side against Kitna and the rest of the Seattle Seahawks. It was a game that was tied four times with eight lead changes. St. Louis ultimately won it on a late field goal, 37-34, but Martz never forgot Kitna’s effort.
“We had them down, he brought them back,” Martz said. “I never forgot that. The other day I was going through some stuff and I came across his scouting report. I kinda chuckled. It said: ‘Incredible competitor. Reeks of leadership.’
Six years later, Martz had a chance to experience that firsthand after signing on to coach the Lions in 2006. Kitna was his quarterback, and the veteran would set career highs in passing yards in each of the 2006 and 2007 seasons, as well as leading the NFL in completions in the former.
It was in Detroit that Martz realized Kitna was special when it came to understanding the game. Martz was big on details such as footwork, how high should you hold the ball near the chest before throwing it, making sure your shoulders are square with the target and recognizing what the defense is going to do just before the snap. Many players got bogged down in nuances. Not Kitna.
“I know for sure I never had anybody who absorbed and understood what we were doing as quickly as he did and embraced it,” Martz said of Kitna. “He’s all in or he’s all out. No shades of grey with Jon. Fortunately, he embraced it and learned a system and why we did things better than any quarterback I ever had. He could relay it and teach it himself within a year or so, which is remarkable. He knew what we do offensively better than the coaches did.”
Williams saw the same thing in the locker room.
“He took his game, his football IQ, to another level to where now he can play that information to the next guy,” Williams said.
Kitna played four more years before retiring after the 2011 season. He then returned to his alma mater, Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington, to become the head coach. It was a dream fulfilled. Kitna always wanted to coach high school football. He wanted to mentor kids and educate them about the game. He spent three years in Tacoma before moving back to Texas to take over Waxahachie High School. Two years later, he was off to Brophy College Prep, a Jesuit school in Phoenix. But Martz called before he could ever coach a game. He committed to join the Fleet in the summer of 2018, half a year before the AAF’s inaugural season would kick off.
Then everything changed again with Garrett and the Cowboys. After a 2018 season in which the Cowboys offense finished 21st in yards per play (5.4) and 22nd in total yards (5,501), Garrett fired offensive coordinator Scott Linehan and promoted Moore to replace him.
But Garrett knew that, for it to work, he’d need the right person to backfill Moore’s spot. To him, Kitna was the perfect fit. It was a course correction for a man who was more than content to remain on the level where he was already working.
“It’s something I’ve been praying about for years, if certain things happened,” Kitna said. “So it wasn’t out of left field. I wanted to be a high school coach forever, but I felt like the Lord was just moving things in my life that (it) wasn’t going to be the case… (My family and I) had talked about it the last couple of years. If Jason wanted me to come on his staff, then I was going to do it.” [HR][/HR]
He’s ingratiated himself quickly. Kitna got to his first chance to know his new coordinator and quarterback at the Pro Bowl. He took every window he could to get some football talk in. With Moore, that meant talking strategy as they walked off the practice field together. With Prescott, it was on a bus ride to the team hotel. Kitna made it work, as he always does. He commands a room, a bus ride, a walk across the field by connecting with people.
“You meet him and he has a strong personality,” Prescott said. “(It’s been) much more, honestly, that I could ask for just in the first two days of the teaching sessions. He’s going to push me. That’s what I asked for, and he’s going to make me a better player.”
And while there are some questions about whether Moore can actually push this offense to greater heights, Kitna’s abilities to connect with all sorts of people should make the transition easier.
One of the things Linehan was criticized for was a lack of flexibility in the offense. He seemed out of touch with today’s NFL. Moore and Kitna have a better grip on the complexities of the NFL, in which running the same formation doesn’t necessarily lead to running the same play. It’s just one of the lessons Kitna has taken with him from high school football, the breeding ground of offensive creativity. While Moore is the coordinator, Garrett says that both he and Kitna will have a hand in offensive game-planning. The bet is Kitna’s background and Moore’s youth figure can help Dallas modernize its offense.
“I think our convictions about offensive football and defensive football and how we play special teams won’t change that much, but you certainly want to implement things differently,” Garrett said.
Of course, the person who stands to benefit most is Prescott.
“I think it’s good to have a new voice for Dak, someone who I think believes in the things that we believe in but maybe can present it a little differently,” Garrett added. “Hopefully that resonates with Dak and the other quarterbacks.”
Williams saw firsthand the benefits of what Kitna’s knowledge can bring to a younger quarterback. He was there when Kitna was backing up Romo – “I think Tony should have listened to Kitna a little bit more than what he did,” he says – and believes that Prescott can mesh with him by virtue of being a younger player who “has that desire to be the best.”
That’s something Kitna has noticed firsthand as he continues to push for bigger things from the 25-year-old.
“He wants to be elite,” Kitna said of Prescott. “From the first day when I got down to the Pro Bowl, we talked about it, and we continue to have those conversations. We’re all saying the same thing, really and he’s already working on those things. When he did his self-evaluations it looked very similar to the evaluation that I had done on him. So we’re not talking about a guy who needs to be fixed or revamped. Here he had (3,885) yards and (67.7) percent completion percentage. That’s pretty darn good in this league. We’ll continue to get the most out of everything really.”
And if that happens, Kitna could be on the move again, this time from quarterbacks coach to possibly offensive coordinator or head coach.
“He just didn’t play and learn the game to play it,” Martz said. “He learned it way past that. To master it.”
He just has to bring the right people together along the way.