We are through a week of Arizona Cardinals practices and the changes are… well good it seems.
Will it lead to wins in 2026? Who knows?
The Cardinals are banking on a first time head coach, a young defensive coordinator who has struggled, an offensive coordinator who doesn’t have very much respect around the league and a veteran quarterback sitting at 20-45 in his career as a starter.
Yet, there are things to be excited about.
The offense has been open quite a bit in the passing game during practices:
LaFleur’s passing schemes are doing a good job, of course LaFleur’s Rams offense with Sean McVay running things scored an ungodly amount of points on the Nick Rallis Cardinals defense last year, so maybe this is not a surprise? It is training camp.
One thing that has been interesting to watch, and get text about is the quarterback… Jacoby Brissett.
Brissett has been understandably up and down, but there are some issues that we have to hope get ironed out before September 13th, which seems really far away, but is in fact right around the corner.
The rust was to be expected, especially on what was essentially his first full practice, and then was hit and miss from there the next couple days.
Then Wednesday came and JaguarGator9 who has been there all the time captured some moments, and then my guy on the ground was also texting me quite a bit that day (two separate people for those curious) and it was interesting.
So I want to start by saying I was not there, so this is trusting someone I trust and someone I don’t know but has no reason to not be unbiased in Gator, but I wanted to address a couple of points.
- The penalty issues are on JB. It is what it is, but when you haven’t been at anything, and now you are changing up cadences, etc. there will be some rough patches, not unexpected, but this is part of the issue with holding out the whole season.
- The misses are not unexpected either, but the deep misses are something I have been told about, and after watching there is a reason… he is out of shape. His legs are dead, he looks a little ballooned, and he’s not moving well right now. That again is a byproduct of this offseason or maybe lack of offseason.
- I think that the MHJ “hate” is way overblown and he is going to have a productive year.
- I think their plan with Love is smart. See what this OL looks like, let Allgeier be the guy that finds out early.
The Brissett thing is what it is right now. I am hopeful he will get into shape and the work will clear up the presnap issues we are seeing as of now.
Outside of that, this week has been mostly unexceptional, and that is good for training camp.
