Though he’s never held the job of play-caller, Kafka has been unofficially training for it. He was an outstanding quarterback at Northwestern University, where he threw for 4,265 yards and 19 touchdowns. One of the NFL’s most respected offensive coaches, Andy Reid, selected him in the fourth round of the 2020 NFL Draft for the Philadelphia Eagles. Kafka played four games for the Eagles and spent time with New England, Tampa Bay and Minnesota.
In 2016, he began his coaching career as an offensive graduate assistant at his alma mater. The next year, Reid hired him to be the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive quality control coach. Kafka then spent four years as the team’s quarterbacks coach, adding the title and responsibility of passing game coordinator in his final two seasons before joining the Giants.
During Kafka’s tenure in Kansas City, the Chiefs were one of the NFL’s most successful teams and deployed one of the league’s most prolific offenses. Patrick Mahomes became an NFL most valuable player and Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce and Mecole Hardman developed into elite receivers.
“The light really went off for me when I was a graduate assistant at Northwestern,” Kafka said. “As soon as I got finished playing, coach Fitz (Pat Fitzgerald) had an opportunity to be a G.A. there, so he said, ‘Hey, come out, try it out, see if you want to get into coaching.’ And it was great, my alma mater. I was really familiar with the staff and coaches there and how they want to run the team. Coach Fitz runs the team. Pretty much within the first three days really, I knew this was exactly what I wanted to do. Loved every minute of it. You kind of see behind the curtain a little bit what the coaches have to go through to get ready for just a practice: scripting and carding and putting together the practice plans, and practice installs.
“And for me as a player, like being the third, second and third quarterback for most of my career – all of my career – that was something that was easy…
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