The biggest hiring trend this off season in the NFL was teams trying to hire the young, offensive minded guys that have a strong history of developing quality NFL quarterbacks, as each team tries to uncover the next Sean McVay - who took the Rams from bottom dwellers to the Super Bowl in just a few short years.
One of the franchises guilty of following that trend is the Arizona Cardinals, who picked up recently fired Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury to be their new head coach. Beyond having a lot in common on the surface, Kingsbury and McVay have also become good friends, and while appearing on Adam Schefter's podcast recently, McVay shared a great story of an epic prank he recently pulled on Kingsbury.
At about the 8:40 mark, McVay talks about going to dinner with Kingsbury and Patrick Mahomes where the prank unfolded.
"I kind of tricked him into thinking he was going to be in trouble with the league with tampering, and stuff like that. I think his assistant got all wigged out, he was worried about losing picks, and said he'd better call [Cardinals General Manager] Steve Keim " McVay casually shared, which prompted Schefter to press for some more details.
The next nugget took some planning and foresight on McVay's part. Boss move.
"So we have a mutual friend, and I put his name in my phone as 'Roger Goodell,' and I had this friend send me a text saying - 'I can't believe you're at dinner with Kingsbury and Mahomes. You know better than this. This is tampering. You're both losing picks.'"
"I showed Kliff the text, and he saw a ghost. I said 'You better call Steve Keim right away.' He said 'Oh, I thought I was going to lose the number one overall pick.' We couldn't let it go on for too long, but it was pretty good."
Imagine both their faces when McVay showed Kingsbury that text. Had to be absolutely hilarious.
"It was fun. Hopefully this story doesn't get anyone in trouble," McVay added, also noting that Kingsbury has vowed to get him back.
Listen to Schefter's full conversation with McVay, and the rest of his podcast below, or head here.
[audio mp3="http://footballscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/schefter_2019-04-01-062215-8006-0-992-0.64k.mp3"][/audio]