Coined by some as the worst franchise in American sports, the Arizona Cardinals could use a successful season more than most teams.
Thankfully for them, there are a couple of ways to define success in the NFL.
There’s selling tickets and making money. Every team does that. It is the NFL, after all.
There’s winning football games. Most teams are striving to do that. Purposeful losing isn’t as rampant as it has been in the NBA, but a few “tank bowls” still go down each year.
And finally, there’s player development. A team can be bad, but so long as its younger players get better and show promise, that can be all a team needs to sell its fans on a good year.
The Arizona Cardinals seem to be fine with losing a bunch of games; with how good their division is, it’s not like they could win many anyway.
So looking through just the lenses of player development and money, it’s fair to ask: What would define a successful season for the Arizona Cardinals this year?
The Cardinals Drafted Jeremiyah Love Solely for Brand Notoriety
The Cardinals knew they would be bad this year — a phrase NFL fans have uttered every year since 2021 when a miracle 7-0 start turned into a squandered NFC West title and a swift first-round exit to the hands of the eventual Super Bowl-winning Rams. Arizona has just one season with more than four wins since then, and zero over .500.
Bad NFL teams still usually put butts in seats, though. A “tanking” team usually isn’t worried about their bottom line because of the NFL’s sure-fire growth projections and their national revenue-sharing models.
But how does an NFL team make EVEN more money? (Because as we all know, all the money in the world is never enough money)
Merch, for starters.
Who’s the Next Face of the Franchise?
The Cardinals gave up on their former No. 1 pick and franchise QB, Kyler Murray, this offseason. They’re taking a dead cap hit of $46 million just to move on from him.
One would think Marvin Harrison Jr. would be in line to take over as the face of the franchise, but he’s far from that (more on him later). Trey McBride set the NFL record for catches by a tight end in a season, but a tight end on a terrible team can only take a brand so far.
The Cardinals must’ve thought they needed someone else; someone new, fresh and captivating.
That must be why they drafted Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love. There’s almost no other explanation for it.
To be fair, the Cardinals haven’t had a player crack the Top 50 in total player sales since 2023, making them the only team in the league not to have at least one, per NFLPA press releases. Maybe Love can be that for them. He is a Notre Dame phenom, which should help.
But he has quite an uphill battle ahead of him, given the state of the team. Just ask Ashton Jeanty how his rookie year went.
So, one could assume that if Love cracks the Top 50 in player sales and establishes a new face of the franchise, that could be a successful season for Arizona.
The Cardinals Don’t Know Which Players They Want to Be Good
The Cardinals historically haven’t been good at making big decisions; that’s even truer as of late.
All four of their biggest signings from the 2024 offseason — Jonah Williams, Justin Jones, Sean Murphy-Bunting and Bilal Nichols — are backups on ESPN’s depth chart going into this year or off the team. From last year’s larger signings, Calais Campbell was a semi-expected one-and-done, and the team released Akeem Davis-Gaither in March.
To credit the Cardinals, Josh Sweat was highly productive last season, and now Jacoby Brissett is the team’s starter. So at least for part of this season, those two remain worthwhile signings — the former as a potential trade piece and the latter as a placeholder.
Still, it’s safe to assume that the fans and the front office can agree that the less difficult decisions this franchise has to make, the better. That means it would be nice for Arizona if the players sorted out amongst themselves over the course of the season, via on-field production, who will make up the Cardinals’ core nucleus and lead the charge into the future.
But there seems to be a lot of ways that picture can get muddied.
Will Marvin Harrison Jr. or Michael Wilson Be WR1?
For starters, Marvin Harrison Jr., labeled a “no-brainer” selection in 2024, is currently dangling above a tank of “bust”-piranhas, just waiting to rip him to shreds. One more bad season from him and NFL media will feed him to the fishes.
Meanwhile, Michael Wilson was a relative revelation to end last season. The third-round pick out of Stanford hauled in 56 of his 88 targets from Week 10 on, which are both more than Harrison had all of last season in the 12 games he played.
Brissett and Wilson clearly have some sort of connection. But given that Brissett is a placeholder QB, do the Cardinals want them to continue their chemistry? Harrison’s fifth-year option will be on the table this summer; Wilson will become an unrestricted free agent. There’s likely only room for one of them moving forward.
The Cardinals’ QB Battle No One Should Win
Speaking of Brissett, the 33-year-old is likely around to help the development of the rest of the offense and nothing more. He’s been the NFL’s definition of a bridge QB, a moniker the Patriots’ Jerod Mayo cemented in stone, and now the Cardinals are polishing.
But behind Brissett is Carson Beck (and Gardner Minshew, but he seems like Brissett insurance). Beck is older, experienced, a winner, and flawed. The Cardinals took him in the third round, which received mixed reviews, but more that were negative — draft pundits saw Beck as a reach.
“It’s one of my least favorite picks of the draft,” said CBS’ Mike Renner. “It feels like they’re just throwing their fanbase a bone.”
Focusing on this season, many Cardinals fans would probably love to see new Head Coach Mike LaFleur hand Beck the job early and for him to thrive right away.
However, with a worth-tanking-for 2027 QB Class on the way, is that really the best outcome? Would the Cardinals be fooled into thinking a relatively ready-to-go rookie such as Beck is the long-term answer, passing on Manning and Moore, only to have Beck plateau after this first year?
Cardinals Defensive Outlook
The defensive side of the ball is a bit more straightforward; the Cardinals will take any production they can get. Arizona was one of the most-injured teams in the NFL last season, according to football analyst Warren Sharp. They’re just looking for a semblance of an identity under Nick Rallis, who’s back for his third season in Arizona after failing under the guidance of supposed defensive mastermind Jonathan Gannon the past two years.
All in all, the Cardinals should be hoping to accumulate clarity during the season. The closer they can come to having a crystallized blueprint laid out for them heading into the summer of 2027, the better.
Can Mike LaFleur Change the Cardinals’ Culture?
Perhaps the most important man that’ll show up to State Farm Stadium every week is LaFleur. He’ll be tasked with establishing some sort of identity for one of the league’s biggest laughingstocks.
The bar is low in Arizona. No team is further away from the rest of its division than the Cardinals are right now.
If LaFleur can run a sound operation, hopefully the right players emerge as champions ready to rebrand this organization. Jeremiyah Love, for better or for worse, is up to bat first.
Just don’t break the generational talent’s spirit, Cardinals. That’s all football fans ask for this year.
Leave a comment