The ESSENTIAL Football Show 
Top 51 Cap Space: 2026: $41.4 million | 2027: $148.9 million | 2028: $417.0 million
Draft Picks: 2027: 1-7 | 2028: 1-7
Football Decision Makers: GM Monti Ossenfort | HC Matt LaFleur | OC Nathaniel Hackett | DC Nick Rallis | ST Michael Ghobrial
State of the Team
On the surface, the Arizona Cardinals appear to be a team ready for a multi-year rebuild.
However, with GM Monti Ossenfort on Year 4 of his build and Head Coach #2, the Cardinals may not see it that way internally. The timing is different, but there are parallels to draw between Arizona’s situation, where Mike LaFleur takes over as head coach for the departed Jonathan Gannon, and the one Atlanta found itself in after (former) GM Terry Fontenot swapped out Arthur Smith for Raheem Morris as the Head Coach with the expectation that Fontenot’s roster should be ready to compete.
There are other comparison points; the Falcons had already drafted running back Bijan Robinson ahead of the coaching swap, but it’s another organization that passed on premium positions of need to add a superstar running back.
To that end, I think two things can be true at once; running back Jeremiyah Love, the 3rd overall pick of the 2026 NFL Draft, should have the shortest odds for Offensive Rookie of the Year and immediately add more juice to the Cardinals offense than Tyler Allgeier would have added. (Ironically, Allgeier, a perfectly solid NFL back, once again finds his role displaced by an elite prospect, making it entirely possible Allgeier will wind up with the odd distinction of posting a +EV season as the lead back in the first season of his Round 4 rookie deal, only to never be a lead back again).
In any case, Love’s upside is why Arizona prioritized, and I think that is very real.
Unfortunately, the other truth is that I don’t recall a situation in recent NFL history where a running back drove a team’s success. I can point to plenty of backs putting a good situation over the top, but we can also point to the shift in fortunes for Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry after they swapped squads going into 2024, the continued lack of success for Atlanta even as Robinson broke out as arguably the best back in the NFL, Detroit taking a step back even as Jahmyr Gibbs put himself in that same discussion as the league’s best back, or Las Vegas winding up as the worst team in the NFL with Ashton Jeanty as arguments that running backs are not “load-bearing walls”.
How does that translate to the specifics of Arizona’s situation? Let’s dig a bit more into both sides of the ball, then re-visit how this is likely to play out over the upcoming three-year window.
Offense
In terms of skill position and interior offensive line, Arizona is well-equipped for 2026.
We’ve already talked about Love, who profiles as a potential blue-chip player out of the gate, but the rookie is far from the only explosive skill player; the Cardinals employ arguably the NFL’s best pass-catching tight end in Trey McBride, a deep running back rotation behind Love featuring Allgeier, James Conner, and Trey Benson, and a wide receiver duo that could be one of the league’s better outside tandems if Michael Wilson sustains last season’s dominant finish and Marvin Harrison Jr. can continue to build out his game as a player. (On Harrison, there were a lot of disappointing moments/injuries in Year Two, but I thought his early-season film showed a player who looked somewhat more explosive. I was surprised by Harrison’s lack of sudden movement on his rookie tape, but I’m not out on the player, there is still a lot of good to work with. It’s also worth noting that Conner/Benson profile as potential trade candidates if both are healthy come training camp).
In the best-case scenario, Arizona could have a Top 5 skill group, and the interior offensive line should be able to hold its weight. The Cardinals already had center Hjalte Froholdt, a solid player who has manned the pivot since Ossenfort’s first season, and added a solid veteran free-agent (Isaac Seumalo) and a high-end draft pick (second-rounder Chase Bison’s) as the starting left and right guards. They also have an experienced depth piece; Arizona upgraded on Isaiah Adams for a reason, but he has still started a lot of games in his first two seasons and profiles well as a backup.
That leaves the quarterback and offensive tackle positions, which, unfortunately, are the hardest offensive positions to fill, and is where this discussion gets complicated. Jacoby Brissett played pretty good ball last year, all things considered, but I’m not sure that translates to him being the “guy” moving forward. Gardner Minshew is another career backup - albeit one with less impressive physical traits than Brissett - and Carson Beck, who went at the top of the third round despite checking in around 6’4/6’5 and 230 pounds with significant college production on the biggest stages at Georgia and Miami, is an extreme long-shot to emerge as a starter. (Players with that profile go in the 1st round unless something significant is missing; Beck might buck that trend, the odds are just long.)
The Cardinals didn’t have an option at quarterback, but they did have options at offensive tackle, and given how hard that position is to fill, it was worth considering. Paris Johnson is a solid foundation piece at left tackle, and a team can have a competent offense with free-agent addition Elijah Wilkinson at right tackle, but Wilkinson is better suited to be a swing tackle, and there is a total lack of depth if either one of them gets injured; there was a time when I liked Oli Udoh as a swing tackle, but that was about three years (and three jerseys) ago.
If the dice rolls their way, it could certainly work out that Arizona grabs their quarterback and another tackle at the top of the 2027 NFL Draft, but that’s a lot of ifs, and given the number of question marks on the other side of the ball, there’s at least a debate about whether the Cardinals could have taken the route the Cleveland Browns took in this year’s draft, where they loaded up the long-term infrastructure and didn’t try to force anything at quarterback.
Defense
Injuries impact every NFL team, but there are few depth charts with more “what-ifs” related to player health than Arizona’s defense. In fact, each of their top two picks from the last two drafts (2024: DL Darius Robinson, 1st, CB Max Melton, 2nd; 2025: DL Walter Nolen, 1st, Will Johnson, 2nd) has missed significant time, with Melton, Nolen, and Johnson all missing significant stretches of 2025. That’s a pretty terrible formula for success, particularly when the only impact defender added via free agency in that period is edge rusher Josh Sweat, who quietly put together a quality season in the first year of his deal.
Nick Rallis was retained as defensive coordinator with LaFleur taking over as head coach, which seems like a curious move given how poorly Arizona’s defense performed last season. The Cardinals have been lauded for the creativity they showed in their three deep safety looks, but while that’s been a fun changeup, it has yet to gain widespread adoption around the league, which is probably an indicator of how effective that “innovative” strategy has been.
In Rallis’s defense, he had very few players to work with, but unless the aforementioned quartet of picks starts to be more available/productive, I don’t know how adding Roy Lopez and Andrew Billings at nose tackle along with a fourth-round defensive end (Kaleb Proctor) is going to do much of anything. I do like the potential Melton and Johnson showed as a starting outside corner tandem early last season, but we got six games out of Walter Nolen, and Darius Robinson, who suited up for 15 games after playing six his rookie year, wasn’t exactly a difference-maker last season.
This defense has some useful players - safety Budda Baker might not be at his peak, but he can still make plays, and Garrett Williams is solid in the nickel - but there is also a glaring hole at off-ball linebacker, where the returning duo of Mack Wilson and Cody Simon didn’t do much to inspire confidence.
If healthy, this defense could be middle of the pack - it’s hard to see how they generate consistent pass rush barring a breakout from Nolen or Robinson - but there’s also downside for them to struggle as badly as they did down the stretch last season, when they closed by allowing 45, 40, 26, 37, and 37 points in their final five games.
Final Takeaways
NFL teams come together in all sorts of ways, and it’s not out of the question that the Cardinals thread the needle here.
That said, this does not strike me as an optimal plan for an organization as far away from consistently contending as I perceive the Cardinals to be. It’s more of a “cherry on top” draft than it is pouring the foundation, and while it’s nice to think that Monti Ossenfort should be building towards that type of draft this deep into his tenure, you have to squint pretty hard to look at the players added in 2023, 2024, and 2025 in the context of the current roster and come away saying that Ossenfort has crushed it. The 2023 class was a decent starting point (LT Johnson, EDGE BJ Ojulari, WR Wilson, NB Williams) with three relative hits and one miss (Ojulari) in the top four picks, so it’s entirely possible that 2026 turns out the same, but the Cardinals also badly need things to turn out that way.
To Ossenfort’s credit, he took over a horrendous situation - Arizona’s 2022 offensive line play stands out as particularly terrible in my tape memory (though the 2018 Josh Rosen Arizona line might hold that title belt, so all relative…) - and he has built the direction in the right direction in many regards.
Unfortunately, the transformation isn’t happening fast enough, and three years is a LONG time to spend sorting through the quarterback situation. As much as you’d like to think Ossenfort would have a clean slate post-Kyler Murray saga, that’s rarely how the NFL works.
Arizona’s offense should be fun. It could be a LOT of fun.
Whether that comes together with the defense to form a legitimate contender is another question… and if the offense hits its ceiling, the Cardinals probably win enough games that there isn’t a clear path to the long-term answer at quarterback.
It’s where this year vs. next year comes into play. There’s certainly a world where it all comes together, but in an honest moment, I’d guess even Monti Ossenfort would tell you he’s going to need a couple of favorable bounces to turn this into a legitimate contender in the foreseeable future.