It was only 14 months ago that hope seemed legitimate and expectations were high when the Arizona Cardinals opened the 2025 season with two victories.
The previous year, the second with head coach Jonathan Gannon and general manager Monti Ossenfort, the team improved from four wins to eight.
There was balance in the offense with quarterback Kyler Murray playing all 17 games, running back James Conner rushing for 1,094 yards and eight touchdowns, and a defense that was showing growth. The record was 3-5 in one-score games. Not great, obviously, but not dismal either.
Believe it or not, the Cardinals produced a 6-3 record at home, after being 3-14 in State Farm Stadium after starting the 2021 season with seven consecutive win with three at home.
Offensive coordinator Drew Petzing was interviewed as a potential head coach and a fickle fan base was worried he might leave.
Defensive lineman Walter Nolen III and cornerback Will Johnson were selected in the first two rounds of the 2025 draft and the season opened with two one-score victories over the Saints and Panthers with the latter at home.
It didn’t take long for the bottom to fall out. Following the Carolina game, there were losses to the 49ers and Seahawks by one and three points, respectively, and then the stunning loss to the Titans after running back Emari Demercado dropped the ball short of the goal line, preventing a touchdown that would have increased the Cardinals' lead to 28-6 with 12:40 remaining in the game.
Cameras caught Gannon making contact with Demercado after the play and he was fined $100,000 by owner Michael Bidwill. His departure ticket might as well have been issued right then.
Prior to the Demercado faux pas, Murray was hit in the face by an early shotgun snap and suffered a foot injury when he planted awkwardly. He returned to the game after missing two snaps, but those were his last with the Cardinals.
Almost forgotten is an interception by safety Dadrion Taylor-Demerson at the Arizona 5-yard line that was fumbled after going to the ground untouched and the Titans recovered in the end zone to cut the lead to 21-19 with 4:53 on the clock.
The defense failed to stop Tennessee on a drive that began at the 18-yard line and shockingly (LOL) featured a 38-yard pass play to the 15-yard line from quarterback Cam Ward to wide receiver Calvin Ridley with 26 seconds remaining, setting the stage for kicker Joey Slye’s game-winning 29-yard field goal as time expired.
Conner played only three games. Blocking tight end Tip Reiman, a contributor to the ground attack in 2024, played four (and still hasn’t returned), and linebacker Mack Wilson Sr. missed all nine in a losing streak that began after a victory over the Cowboys had them at 3-5. Following the Carolina game, the Cardinals lost eight consecutive one-score games by a total of 26 points.
By the end of the season, the Cardinals had 25 players on reserve injured lists, a number that totaled 32 at varying points in the season. The missed games were well over 300 for all injured players, by far the most in the NFL.
It was no surprise Gannon was fired after a step-back season, which is the lamentable history of the franchise from Don Coryell to Jim Hanifan to Ken Whisenhunt to Kliff Kingbury. Whisenhunt got more than one after Kurt Warner retired, thanks to the Super Bowl appearance, but the quarterbacking was a no-man’s-land after Warner departed.
It’s why Hanifan and Whisenhunt are the only coaches in club history to have lasted six seasons. Whisenhunt is the all-time leader with 102 games coached. The 49ers have six with 100 or more, including Kyle Shanahan, who is the franchise all-time leader with 170.
Shanahan began his tenure in 2017 with seasons of 6-10 and 4-12. Consider this: since that 2017 season, the 49ers have had Shanahan, the Rams Sean McVay and the Seahawks Pete Carroll and Mike Macdonald. That’s four total head coaches in 10 seasons for the division rivals of the Cardinals, for which Mike LaFleur is the fifth since 2017 more than the other three teams combined.
Now, here we are, in a season where no one believed the record would be any different than it is after the schedule was unveiled in May, but collective amnesia can be a severe affliction. Also, wide receiver Jalen Brooks is the 12th player on a reserve injury list with seven since the roster reduction to 53 two months ago. Only six teams have more than seven.
Meanwhile, most everyone is lamenting the 10 consecutive home losses since that Panthers game on September 14 of last year. Understandable, but that just accentuates the reality that teams with bad records lose everywhere.
Putting that 2024 season aside, the home record since the 3-0 start in 2021 is 4-29. The road record since the start of 2022 is 11-27, which of course is nothing to crow about.
The anger and frustration has resulted in “sell-the-team” billboards aimed at Bidwill and produced by fans that at the least push for him to hire a team president to call the football shots without interference. The latest suggestion is Larry Fitzgerald, which is similar to the Falcons hiring former quarterback Matt Ryan as president of football. But that’s an NFL outlier.
Most notable is that owners who aren’t football decision-makers and don’t fancy themselves as experts still control the spending. Plus, most team presidents are in charge of business-related functions, while the de facto football presidents usually are general managers without the title, although the official presidents of football operations for the 49ers and Seahawks are general managers John Lynch and John Schneider.
Still the overriding question is this: since fans don’t trust Bidwill to make important decisions, what confidence is there that he would hire the right person to be president?
And then significantly increase the budget to pursue top coaching candidates while also opening the checkbook for assistant coaches.
While there’s was never a chance the Cardinals would hire Sean Payton in the 2023 pursuit or John Harbaugh this year, there’s obviously nothing unusual or wrong in hiring first-time head coaches as Shanahan, McVay and Macdonald were. But it is crucial for the coach to be able to hire the best and most experienced NFL staff he can.
It’s eye-opening that LaFleur’s current staff has only two coaches with 10-plus years of NFL experience: offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett (17) and senior defensive analyst Teryl Austin (22).
When Gannon was hired in 2023 and word got out he was hiring Petzing and Nick Rallis as defensive coordinator, he told Peter King he would also be bringing on board senior assistants that have significant experience. That never happened and his first staff had two coaches with 10 or more years: Ben Steele, tight ends (11) and special-teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers (19).
By contrast, the staffs for Shanahan and McVay in 2017 each had eight and Macdonald’s 2024 staff had six. This year, the 49ers and Rams have 10 and the Seahawks nine. Other examples are the Chiefs with 11 and the Broncos nine.
Those differences are stark, which, if not addressed, will only contribute to even more desolation.
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This article originally appeared on Cards Wire: Many reasons why Arizona Cardinals are where they are
