Why Your Team Sucks 2022: Arizona Cardinals

Some people are fans of the Arizona Cardinals. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Arizona Cardinals. This 2022 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: Arizona Cardinals.

Your 2021 record: 11-6. The Cardinals started last season 7-0, and then HOO BOY did they shit the bed with a primal sense of urgency. Their first loss came at the hands of a hollowed-out Packers team summoning their trademark brand of Packers resourcefulness that makes me abhor Green Bay. They lost out on a chance to clinch a playoff berth against Detroit when they got crushed by their former quarterback. The Cards allowed something named Craig Reynolds rush for over 100 yards against them that fateful afternoon. A shorthanded Colts team defeated them using what the AP describes as “sheer grit,” which is the purest form of grit on the market presently. Sells for $50 a gram.

Their defense also decided to throw Cam Newton a retirement party. They got kick-sixed by Jacksonville. Their best wideout missed seven of the final nine games, almost like he was telegraphing future absences to them. They lost JJ Watt for the back half of the season, because hoping that JJ Watt plays a full season is like hoping that we’ll all be able to live on fucking Mars one day. They managed do-or-die situations with all the wisdom that a President Mickey Rourke would. And finally, they dropped three of their last four, including a loss at home to Seattle in Week 18 that cost them the division title. And brother, did that loss ever prove costly the following week.

That was the first Monday Night playoff game in NFL history. I pray it’s the last. Once LA had raced out to a 28-0 lead in the third quarter, I thanked the Rams for giving me tacit permission to go to bed, which I then immediately did. It would appear that Arizona beat me to the sandman on this particular night, because they amassed just 183 yards the entire game. They turned the ball over twice. They converted zero third downs. Budda Baker left the stadium on a stretcher. This team has one of the coolest young quarterbacks in football and no shortage of talent around him, and yet they get figured out by midseason every year. Why?

Your coach: Show ‘em the numbers.

It’s never fun to go .500. but it’s even less fun to do so when your coach loads up on wins at the beginning of the season and proceeds to vomit them all back up two months later. Kliff Kingsbury was a loser in college and, if you count the Wild Card loss last season, he’s a loser in the NFL as well. I don’t care how swank his stupid house is. He blows. But the Cardinals still extended both him and GM/angry beaver Steve Keim to contract extensions that run through 2027. Do you know how far away that is? There won’t even BE an NFL in 2027, man. Rollerball will be the dominant sport in America by then. Why on Earth did the Cards give these two fuckers tenure?

What turnaround? Bruce Arians took this team to the NFC title game with a QB he plucked off of the scrap heap. You guys haven’t come within a dog’s dick of that since then. Only a goddamn Republican would mistake regression for progress this badly.

Speaking of regression …

Your quarterback: Kyler Murray, who got $160 million in guarantees this offseason, with a six-foot long string attached.

The Cardinals would go on to rescind this contract clause after everyone made a fuss about it, but it’s awfully strange for an organization to commit that much time and treasure to a quarterback that they openly dislike. The Cards flirted briefly with the idea of trading Murray this offseason, until they realized that you never trade a young franchise QB unless that QB turns out to be the Bill Cosby of quarterbacks. Trading Kyler would have set this team back at least a decade. Keeping him was clearly the only play for them to make, so they did. But if I may be so bold, allow me to state that both of the following things can be true.

1. The Cardinals are run by a bunch of clueless assholes.

2. Kyler Murray is a weirdo and a dick.

Maybe the latter is an OU thing. Regardless, here we have a marriage of convenience that is destined to fall apart at the exact wrong moment, which I’ll put right around Week 10 of every season until the Arizona offloads Murray to Carolina for a second rounder and pair of turf cleats. I genuinely love watching Kyler Murray play football and I wish he would grow into something better than what he is now. The latter will never happen, no matter how much tape that guy does or doesn’t watch. I find this irritating.

Your backup is burgeoning Guy legend Colt McCoy. FUN FACT: Colt McCoy has lasted longer in the NFL than Andrew Luck did. Not due to talent, I assure you.

What’s new that sucks: If the Cardinals are gonna amount to anything more than a bunch of players, coaches, and front office goons sticking together to spare themselves the embarrassment of all going their separate ways, they’re gonna have to do it without wideout DeAndre Hopkins for the first six games. Hop got suspended for PEDs before this season got underway. Let’s hear his side of the story:

So true. Sometimes I’ll lather up with Head & Shoulders and then suddenly I can lift a fucking steam trunk over my head. You just never know. Did I mention that Hop is an anti-vaxxer? What is it with people, man? They move to Arizona and instantly have their brains melt into the sand. But fear not, Cards Nation (more of a county, really): the Cardinals shored up their receiving corps this offseason when they traded their first-round pick away for Ravens wideout Marquise Brown. Let’s see what kind of value they got out of that deal.

Here’s where I note that the Ravens also kicked in a third-rounder to ease the sting, but still: you guys got played. Marquise Brown has had Lamar Jackson—Murray’s superior both on the ground and through the air—as his quarterback for the past three years. In that time, he’s cleared 1,000 yards receiving only once and dropped 15 passes. I have no data backing this next fact up, but all 15 of those drops came on balls where Brown was wide open 45 yards downfield. It’s as if he throws a flag on himself on every play. PFF has N’Keal Harry rated as a better wideout, which can’t be possible. And there’s no Christian Kirk around anymore to give Murray other options. He’s just gonna spend every passing down sprinting away from the pass rush, floating the ball to the sideline, and watching it nail Brown right in the face mask. Maybe Brown can borrow some of Hop’s Pantene to get a little edge.

Elsewhere, the Cardinals signed guard Will Hernandez away from the Giants, but their O-line remains a colander. In ranking the unit toward the bottom of the league, PFF noted that, “the average age of Arizona's five starters come Week 1 will be over 30 years old.” Maybe Arizona re-signed Kyler so that they could deliberately have him killed. No reason to rule it out.

They signed disgraced former Vikings corner Jeff Gladney in the spring and then he died in a car wreck. They lost Chase Edmonds to Miami, leaving their depth at running back nonexistent. They lost three vital front-seven components in Chandler Jones, Jordan Hicks, and Corey Peters. In every way, this team is worse off than it was a season ago. But at least they’re gonna induct the late Bill Bidwill in their Ring of Honor. Because how can you NOT respect the man who moved this franchise out of St. Louis and then forced them to play, for the better part of two decades, in front of bored Cowboys fans in Arizona State’s home stadium? I’d rather the Cards build a new Confederate general statue, to be honest.

What has always sucked: Every Sunday, Cards fan sit in traffic for 45 minutes inside a souped-up Ram Super Duty, stroking an AR-15, waiting to get into the stadium so that they can get into a fistfight there with someone wearing a David Johnson jersey. Santonio Holmes’s big toe represents how close they’ll ever get to winning a Super Bowl. JJ Watt is proof that we all retire to Arizona.

Chris Paul is a choker. Doug Ducey molests small woodland creatures. Fuck Kyrsten Sinema with her own glasses.

Ratto says: 'Zona gonna 'zona, because that's how it works. The Suns went from an NBA Finals and a 64-win season to grudge-signing its own center. The Diamondbacks are a pewter-gray irrelevance. The Coyotes are slowly entering a wormhole in which they will win a Stanley Cup the year before they are evicted from a shopping mall rink.

And then there are the Cardinals, where Mikey Bidwill was allegedly "very unhappy" with the team's early playoff exit and with GM Steve Keim and coach Kliff Kingsbury in particular. This from a guy whose teams went 31-47 in the five previous years and whose family ownership history is one championship since the Hoover Administration. Getting one's hopes up with this team seems like spitting up a rope: unrewarding at best, a face full of spit at worst.

What might not suck: One of my high school friends used to always pronounce Arizona in a Catalonian accent, just for fun. I now do this every time I say that state’s name. Ah-ree-THO-nah. Try it. You’ll never go back.

HEAR IT FROM CARDINALS FANS!

Matt:

Chris:

Thomas:

Ryan:

Steven:

Dan:

Drew (not me):

Sverre:

Jason:

Josh:

Chris:

David:

Chris:

Will:

Steven:

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