Some people are fans of the Arizona Cardinals. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Arizona Cardinals. This 2024 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Arizona Cardinals.
Your 2023 record: 4-13. Four years ago, this team was the future of the NFC. They had a shit-hot rookie QB. They’d hired Kliff Kingsbury as their head coach ... oh, no, we're sorry. This is the start of LAST year's Cardinals WYTS, when it was more fun to laugh at them because they'd just blown up the front office and the coaching staff and they'd just been told by the players union that their facilities are unfit for javelinas. That was the Cardinal Experience Comrade Magary got to revel in. A year later, it's less comedic and more meh-tastic, because with the Cardinals, all the 4-13 seasons start to look the same after a while. They are perpetually 4-13, in mood if not in deed. Even when they're not 4-13, they just give off that 4-13 pheromone. It is hard to come to grips with the fact that in this century alone they have been in a Super Bowl (which they quite nearly won) and a conference final (in which they gave up seven touchdowns to a team that two weeks later scored only one).
But that history seems increasingly distant now, almost as if it didn't happen at all. Since that loss to Carolina, they have the third-worst record in football, ahead of only the Panthers, Giants, and Jets, and last year's flaming dumpster of love began the December before when designated franchise-healer Kyler Murray tore his ACL and meniscus. He missed 11 months of everything the Cardinals did to make sure people understood what happens when lost seasons blend into a religious tapestry of awful, since the Cardinals were already 4-8 when Murray's leg exploded. The Cardinals finished that year using three different starters and recognized that was no way to go through training camp. So they settled on ...
... Joshua Dobbs, who did what you would expect Joshua Dobbs to do with the Cardinals. He guided them to seven losses in their first eight starts, got released and signed by Minnesota and, well, we see your eyelids drooping already. The Cardinals can do that to you, too.
But the Cardinals released him a week before Murray was ready to return, so they took a cool 27-0 loss in Cleveland and then welcomed him back in hopes of making Jonathan Gannon's first season as coach a bit less like Jonathan Gannon's last season as coach. Murray played competently enough in a win over the dreadful Atlantas, but his best work came late in the year when he had finally scraped all the barnacles off his hull and returned to near the form he showed when he was brand new five years ago.
In short, the Cardinals are starting over with the quarterback they started over with in 2019, and after some measures of dissatisfaction with the franchise, he at least knows what his alternative universe would look like. He would be playing for the A's in the hellscape of mid-summer Sacramento on artificial turf that would roast his feet to briquets—as opposed to the autumnal beauties of desert-bracketed Phoenix. It's all a tradeoff in the end, folks.
As for everything else about the Cardinals in 2023, it was about the immediate and non-suspenseful abandonment of hope. The offense that began with running back James Conner, who was sixth in rushing, seventh in yards per carry, and 21st in carries, for a team that was behind early and often. But he is also 29 years old, which is about the time that head coaches see tread wear even if it isn't there, and the Cardinals didn't hire Gannon or draft who they drafted so they could be fourth in rushing and 28th in passing. They hired him to not be Kingsbury, and so far he has not yet fully achieved that. The notion that the 17th century Castilian prison that is the team facility got a new report card from the union that says essentially that it has made greater strides than the team. That is so very Cardinaltastic.
2023, then, wasn't the catastrophe that 2022 was because the Cardinals didn't disappoint in 2023. They merely lived down to projections. What they couldn't do consistently on offense, they allowed their opponents to do. They gave up metric tons of yards on defense and surrendered leads nearly every week, but did so more predictably and less spectacularly than the previous year. There were no expectations, and they met them all. In sum they just Cardinal'd it up.
Your coach: Gannon and general manager Monti Ossenfort have that shaved head thing going, as though they're just too busy taking the defense from 28th to 27th to bother with two minutes of hair care, so they have eliminated the hair. This may be an overreaction by owner Mikey Bidwill to Kingsbury's immaculate hair profile, but more likely it's about how Kingsbury, who was supposed to be an offensive shaman, caused Bidwill to seek out a more experienced defensive mind. Since only one new Cardinals coach has had a winning record in his first year since the 1950s (Bruce Arians), Gannon's stuttering start isn't as worrisome as it is appropriate.
What is more interesting is that the first pick in his second draft, wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., tells us that the longtime defensive specialist Gannon is going all-in on saving Murray so that Murray can save them. True, Harrison was in many analysts' minds the most qualified plug-and-play player in that draft, but if Gannon's longterm plan to show his defensive chops, he and Ossenfort have an odd way of showing it, which makes them both lifelong Cardinals after only 18 months. And speaking of lifelong Cardinals ...
Your quarterback ... is honing his long-held chess chops as a way to kill time between whatever it is Cardinals quarterbacks normally do to hasten the end of their time with the team. But since his five-year contract extension signed in 2022 kicks in this year, whatever Murray's longterm plan for finding a career elsewhere in the NFL is now deferred until such time as Gannon gives up the project that first elevated and then sunk Kingsbury. Murray did seem slightly less run-happy in his eight starts last year, and by comparison to Dobbs looked downright commanding. Again, we're judging whether the bar for clearing is in the ditch or the canyon.
But Murray is also 27 and no longer working on that rookie deal football people crave so much, so while his contract extension puts him among the elite, the Cardinals may become jumpy if, well, when they remain what they historically have been. It would mean leaving Harrison to catch passes from among a parade of future McCowns, McNowns, McSorleys, or what other semi-anonymous McSomebodies the Cardinals settle on, and that usually comes with trade demands, unfollowed Instagram accounts, and other disaffected young'un affectations. The Cardinals would be starting all over again, again, and given that the last starting quarterback to last more than five years was cannabis connoisseur Jake Plummer, and before that Neil Lomax 40 years ago, we should not put that plan too far down in the drawer. I mean, they mean well and all, but at some point you are who you are when you've been that for decades.
What’s new that sucks: You mean since last year? Well, the globe is heating up a bit faster and Phoenix is the bastard child for that development, but other than that the Cardinals have turned over a third of their roster and made Gannon become an offensive guru because he's dancing with who brung 'im. The annual "We really like Coach because he gets us" culture shift story got played five days ago, but every new coach gets a year to figure out what the current culture is (it always stinks) and then to change it into something else (like the Belichick culture, only without the glowering faceplate).
But you know how many culture changes you can have with the same cheapjack owner who's still trying to cut corners on the lobster bisque and the weightroom towels? None, frankly, because when you give a team with the Cardinals' history an excuse to stay the Cardinals, they take it. The big changes were last year. This is supposed to be about how the new has become the new normal, and frankly, that's not the way to bet.
What has always sucked: Haven't we covered this already? These guys have played almost 1,450 games over 105 years and haven't put together four consecutive years of winning football in the last 100 of them. Their two championships came in the Hoover and Truman administrations. Their biggest accomplishment in the last year was outlasting the Arizona Coyotes, one of the very few teams on the planet run less competently than theirs. What has always sucked is the headline of this blog, because it has the word "Cardinals" in it.
What might not suck: Murray and Harrison. This could be the most enjoyable throw-catch tandem since old Kurt Warner and young Larry Fitzgerald 20 years ago, and if the Cardinals aren't ready to stop anyone and Conner turns all 30 and old on them, they could still be worth watching for the majority of the schedule. Not "will." "Could."
HEAR IT FROM CARDINALS FANS!
David:
Being a Cardinals fan is a bit like eating something that always gives you the shits. You know the outcome is going to be bad, it's just a question of how grim things will get.
Last season people thought the Cards would be tanking. That theory forgot that the Cards don't need to try to lose.
This will be my 36th season as a cards fan. So far I've seen 7 winning seasons. This year will not be number 8.
Last season, they went 4-13, and only Carolina did worse. For any other organisation that would be a disaster. For Arizona that was significantly LESS shit than was expected.
The worst thing? I'm from the UK. I could have picked any team other than this Kirk van Houten of an organisation. I did this to myself.
Chris:
Because this team refuses to win any time there are actual expectations, and also because this team comes out of nowhere once a decade, I predict a playoff run in 2024, followed by them being a trendy Super Bowl pick for 2025, followed by them promptly shitting the bed, winning 5 games, and starting the cycle anew.
God help me, I'm excited about this season. The team played hard for Gannon last year, Kyler looked good when he returned, and they got players at positions of need, including probably the best wide receiver in the draft.
What does this mean? It means after they make the playoffs this year, Marvin Harrison, Jr. will get arrested next offseason for trying to stab Michael Rubin with a plasticware knife, and also because no one associated with this franchise has been arrested in a year or so, thus we're due.
I vividly recall Kevin Kolb throwing a pick-six in the 2012 Hall of Fame game I attended out of desperation, even though game logs show it was only an interception. In true Kolb fashion, he got injured two possessions later.
As Kari Lake has "chain-smoke a pack of Doral 100s and hit on a much younger man at a Moose Lodge, but use a filter on all my videos" energy, this team will also give you health problems and make you wake up sorrowful the next day, but they do have Kyler Murray.
Steven:
Why couldn't Utah take this god-forsaken team instead?
David:
The Keim/Kingsbury regime in Arizona was the football equivalent of a toxic waste spill that will take decades to clean up. In comparison to them the new Cardinals’ front office seems somewhat competent, and our victimized fanbase mistakes this for excellence. GM Monti Ossenfort is like the new boyfriend who doesn’t have a job and never sees his kids from his previous marriage, but because he’s not actively beating his new girlfriend her family thinks he’s a great guy. The dude looks like a walking penis and has made zero moves that anyone who subscribes to Mel Kiper’s big board wouldn’t be able to make if they had his job. Oh, wow, he drafted the top-rated wide receiver that fell to him after every team ahead of him took a QB - real genius maneuvering there! No one wants to talk about how he got absolutely swindled by the Texans in a draft day trade last year, or how he used a 3rd round pick to rent the Passtronaut for a few games before offloading him to the Vikings for a 6th round pick. And he’s a true Belichek disciple because he passed on every high-rated CB prospect to take a DB from Rutgers instead.
If anyone wonders how bad it is to be a Cardinals fan just know that four wins last season was considered a rousing success. HC Jonathan Gannon had his untalented team “playing hard” and “leaving it all on the field” and we’re patting his bald head instead of asking why he lost to the Giants and Bears last year while continuing the annual tradition of being swept by every division foe. We're basically giving out gold stars for wiping your ass after dropping a mudpie instead of considering it minimal basic hygiene. Fans are gonna celebrate a 5-win season this year as progress!
And I’m absolutely one of those fans. Most of the year I’m a sane, progressive, non-superstitious person who knows how historically pathetic the Cardinals are and can see the dusty, arid, shithole I live in for the hellscape that it is. Then football season rolls around and I become a tribalistic jackoff pounding shitty beer in 110 F weather until the heatstroke makes my fried brain believe that we’re building our team the right way, and our front office knows what it’s doing sitting on over 30 million dollars worth of cap space. Every loss should be another reminder of how badly I’ve wasted my life cheering for these assholes, but I’ll talk myself into believing all this misery builds character, and the pain shows I’m a real fan, and oh fuck just put me out of my misery already.
Kyler Murray is telling everyone to bet the over while posting shirtless photos of himself looking jacked. Yeah, the league’s terrified of a swole Oompa Loompa who has yet to stay healthy for a full season. Can’t wait to see Marvin Harrison Jr. open downfield only for Kyler Murray to underthrow him because he needs a step stool to see past his offensive line.
This is the team we deserve in Phoenix, though. We’re the Mississippi of the West. We’re Florida with more melanoma. Grunt Style t-shirts are pretty much standard issue out here even though most of the portly gun nuts wearing them couldn’t pass a JROTC physical fitness test if their life depended on it. This city is about as fucking hospitable as Arrakis - if a sandworm devoured this place it would vastly improve the desert.
Fuck Michael Bidwill with one of the rusted barbells he’s too cheap to replace in the team’s weight room.
Wanna be part of the Defector 2024 NFL previews? It’s easy: just email us here with your team’s name in the subject line, and tell us why they suck. Next up: Los Angeles Chargers.
