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There was the face that launched a thousand ships, and then there was the house that launched a thousand tweets.
When the Cardinals posted a picture of Kliff Kingsbury’s War Room 2.0™ on Thursday, the less-than-humble abode, complete with an outdoor fire on a sunny, 90 degree day, set off a Twitterstorm. Kingsbury, virtually alongside General Manager Steve Keim, used the spot to casually architect a Cardinals draft class that will lead to six new players calling Arizona their home.
Many viewers jumped right to Twitter, rapidly firing off takes on the Paradise Valley complex. Lori Johnston, a lecturer at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, and her son, 14-year-old Ty, also sprung into action, their fingers occupied with a different mission: a Lego rendition.
If there were any family in America ready for the task, it was the Johnstons. Lori has researched and written about architecture. Her husband, Andy, was a long time sports journalist. And Ty, an eighth grader, has quite literally been building up to this moment.
He got his first Lego set from his parents for his birthday about 10 years ago, the Lego Road Construction Set (Item #6187). It came with a red dump truck, a green steamroller and a yellow excavator. Even at 14, Ty knows that we don’t exactly solidify our identities at age 4. But the gift set him up for a lifetime of building. He’s gotten Legos for every birthday since, and he’s thinking about being an architect when he grows up. His now-very-public resume also includes the Star Wars Death Star and Saturn V rocket, “almost as tall as my mom.”
MORE: Cardinals coach ‘won’ battle of virtual draft headquarters with house
It took just a little more two hours for Ty and Lori, all on Saturday morning, starting around 9:30 a.m. They didn’t draw out a blueprint, just referred to the picture.
Lori wanted to go fast, to get it out to the world. She thought it would perhaps get 100 likes. They opted not to include Camelback Mountain, focusing on the house.
“We felt like it was really important to be as close as possible to the scene with him on the couch,” Lori told The Republic Saturday.
They finished, she tweeted, and they went outside for a bit before the final rounds of the draft started. And then, they noticed the flurry of alerts. Lori saw that the tweet was getting traction. Then, Ty got a text that that his mom’s tweet was on ESPN. The Lego house party was in full swing.
From the ground up
Part of what makes Kingsbury’s grandiose setup so captivating is the minimalist style. But the Johnstons shined in their attention to the smaller details. There were three cell phones, one facing up and two flipped over. There were two water bottles, ready made from other sets. They debated for a bit whether it was a television or a mirror or a piece of art mounted on the wall. Kingsbury seems to be staring directly at it, but even if one were, say for example, a reporter covering the team who had spent perhaps three days straight thinking about nothing other than this blessed picture, it’s actually still hard to tell. So they found more angles. They zoomed in.
And from there, they got creative. While Kingsbury and Keim grabbed players off their draft board, Lori and Ty grabbed pieces out of their bins. The bins are organized by both color and shape. Ty has more than 350 sets of Legos, so hundreds of thousands of pieces. He also creates his own designs, which was needed, since as of this weekend, Lego oddly does not make a set specific to Kingsbury’s Paradise Valley pad. But the Johnstons had even stepped up their sorting game during the quarantine.
“It’s my continual quest to try to sort them all,” Lori said. “So when we started (Saturday) morning, we were able to quickly find the pieces. … When he said, ‘Mom, I need a piece like this,’ I could go right to the storage bin that had it instead of us hunting through an entire room. So that was kind of the way we were able to work quickly to do this. And without too much frustration. We didn’t step on any Legos.”
At one point, they were going so fast that they included keyboards for the computers, before re-examining the photo and realizing that, ah, no, keyboards would be too much pomp and circumstance for a sockless king.
And then, of course, there was the sockless king himself, Kliff Kingsbury.
Looking for an edge
To start, they used the face of Lego Chris Pratt, known for his role as Sir Andrew Maxwell Dwyer. Kingsbury’s outfit proved easier than the exquisite Hawaiian shirts of Chiefs coach Andy Reid.
“His wardrobe was pretty simple that day,” Ty said. “It was just finding some black pants, and a white, plain Lego torso.”
There’s no differentiation between pants and ankles and shoes. But please don’t mistake that for a lack of consideration on the part of the Johnstons: Ty knew he could snap on a couple of pieces for that detail, but that would break up the sleek look. Even in scaled format, simplicity is key.
“You can add plates underneath the person’s foot, but then it kind of adds that weird depth,” Ty said. “Because the Lego feet, of course, stick out, and the plate’s the same size. So it would just make the foot be really wide.”
“We also knew that it’s a Lego,” Lori added. “So we didn’t want to stress out about the about things that we weren’t going to be able to control.”
The fire was made up of one-by-one studs with holes in the middle for flames. The floor used flat tiles, a common piece with no studs. The pool was trickier, leading to discussions about levels, depth and deciding between clear pieces or blue.
The L-shaped couch proved easy. “He did it in two minutes,” Lori said.
The pillows on the couch were the biggest challenges and the finishing touch. The Johnstons needed to find a way to work within a medium defined by sharp edges. Ty had an ingenious solution, folding over the capes of Lego figures for characters like Harry Potter and Batman and Gandalf to provide some creature comforts for Kliff.
MORE: LOOK: You’ll love this Lego version of Kliff Kingsbury’s draft setup
‘A crib like Kliff’
Kingsbury spends most hours of his day thinking about football. He thinks about football plays and football players. Recently, to mix up his downtime, he binged “All or Nothing: Manchester United,” which is, instead, about fútbol. This is something that makes sense, for someone who’s livelihood revolves around… football.
He has openly acknowledged that he does not spend much time on Twitter, meaning that while he has three phones, he also has far more self-control than I do. So it was no surprise Friday that he was coy when asked if he had seen the reaction to his house. He said he was glad to provide some content. He said he’d gotten a few texts. He did not say to which phone. And he didn’t have to say it, but it seemed he would prefer to talk about football.
He’s worked to shred a reputation as the Lego replica of Ryan Gosling, and Cardinals players are quick to hype that they love his laid-back mannerisms. And as for his house? Players loved it. Pat Mahones tweeted that he’s “trying to have a crib like Kliff!”. J.J. Watt made a Mighty Ducks reference. Christian Kirk said laughed and said it was “a little bit of a subtle flex,” which he fully supported.
“He works hard for it,” the Cardinals wide receiver said. “When you put the hours in that he does, you’ve got to have something nice to come home to.”
Keim even quipped that they would use it as an asset in recruiting free agents.
“Coach (Kingsbury) has been using FaceTime and showing them his palatial estate and trying to recruit them that way, so that should help,” he said after the draft.
It’s already worked in some ways. Even with a cavernous 7,022 square feet, four bedrooms, six bathrooms, 14 parking spaces and social distancing, Kingsbury pulled viewers closer. Through intimate shots of home-office setups and family members trickling in, we learned more about coaches who shield their faces behind playcall sheets and mask their feelings behind clichéd sound bites.
The Johnstons watched every minute of the draft.
“We knew we would be here the whole week starting Thursday watching it. I loved seeing the different coaches’ houses,” Lori said. “… It would have been on no matter if they were in Vegas, or if they were in their home. But I feel like it was nice. I like seeing the coaches and families with their kids.”
‘Still moving in’
A big takeaway from the draft, forced into a remote setup, was that people loved this humanizing look. The Cardinals had teased the home offices in their show “Flight Plan ahead of the draft.
Cardinals President Michael Bidwill even called out Kingsbury — whose shot did his house no justice — for a lack of decorations. “I like what you’ve done with your walls,” Bidwill said, sitting in front of a display of team memorabilia.
“Still moving in, I’ve only been here ninth months,” Kingsbury joked back.
In fairness, he’s had a few other things to tend to. There was a team to build and an offense to install. And there were other considerations when it came to spending.
The week before the draft, Kingsbury quietly donated $50,000 to the Navajo Relief Fund. He wouldn’t have publicized it at all, if it weren’t for the possibility of getting the fund out there and spurring more donations. The Navajo Nation, which includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, has been hit hard by COVID-19, and is third in the nation in infections per capita.
‘A project we did together’
The world has changed quickly from coronavirus, and so more than 1,500 miles away, Ty sticks with what he knows. He starts thinking about what to build in the morning as soon as he gets up, but then waits an hour until his parents are awake, as he knows rummaging through the bins for Legos is loud. He finds building to be relaxing.
You snap together pieces, and you hope it’s the right fit. You talk it out with your co-builders.
“When we do Lego work, we’re talking to each other and explaining our ideas and trying to convince each other things,” Lori said.
They did disagree a few times.
“The grass was a bit weird, because I had a different plan than my mom, and I thought that she was on top of my plan, but she wasn’t,” Ty said. “She thought that I was on board with her plan. And so we kind of started doing totally different things.”
In the end, they went with the studded look for texture.
They’ve gotten requests to recreate Bill Belichick’s living room, which would, of course, not include Bill Belichick, but instead revolve around his majestic husky, Nike. But part of the draw of Kingsbury’s house, on top of the internet frenzy, was the simplicity. They have no plans to do other coaches’ houses.
Ty’s getting more and more into football, and hopes to be able to try out for high school team in the fall, though spring workouts were canceled. But as far as watching, he gravitates toward college football over the NFL, with the family keeping an eye on the Georgia Bulldogs. They hadn’t kept too much of an eye on what the Cardinals had been up to recently.
“I didn’t know who he was,” Ty said.
But now, Kingsbury is a fixture in their life, a viral moment cementing his miniature house as a fixture in their home. They plan to keep it together and are looking for a spot to display it, maybe downstairs. They’ll remember the virtual draft, they’ll remember the expansive living room. And they’ll remember their own exercise in team building.
“I had the vision, but I had to have his help,” Lori said. “It’s so much better because he helped me build it. … It was a project we did together, which is what I loved.”
Want to talk even more about this house? Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 480-356-6407. Follow her on Twitter @kfitz134.
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