So the Cardinals have given up already.
I've never seen an NFL team give up on a season before it starts.
Most NFL teams are full of hope in late August. Most NFL fans are falling asleep at night, dreaming of playoff berths and Superbowl titles. Not Arizona Cardinals’ fans. These poor fans are walking up in a cold sweat each morning, wondering if they really have to live through a year+ of meaningless football.
Sorry Cardinals fans, but you do. I used to be a fan of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers before they spent 3 or 4 years tanking, so I feel your pain.
While tanking is fairly common in the NBA, tanking this obviously in the NFL- before the last month or two of the season- is unheard of.
The only thing Cardinal’s fans have to look forward to is their team potentially having the top 2 picks in the 2024 NFL draft (their own pick and the Texan’s pick). That’s it. Nothing else is good in the desert.
Head Coach Jonathon Gannon, pictured above, is a lame duck. He was the defensive coordinator for the Eagles for the last 2 seasons, and not one person in Philadelphia misses him. Many Eagles fans, myself included, blame Gannon for the Eagles’ Superbowl loss this past February. None of the players on the team made any public comments to support Gannon when he was hired to be the Cardinals head coach.
(Contrast this with new Texans coach DeMeco Ryans, who received fountains of support from former teammates and players when he got hired this offseason.)
I’ve never met Gannon and I don’t have any ill-will towards him as a person, but I would be very surprised if he doesn’t get fired within the next two years. He has the air of an Urban Meyer or Nathaniel Hackett from recent seasons- a coach whose team quits on him by week 9, leaving everyone wondering how the hell he got the job in the first place.
They say that the two most important positions in the NFL are the Head Coach and the Quarterback. To state it even more plainly, I think that the Cardinals now employ a bottom-5 head coach in the NFL. So how are they doing at Quarterback?
Well, not good.
This post was inspired by the fact that the Cardinals just cut their starting QB, Colt McCoy. My jaw dropped when I read that McCoy had been cut. This might be the first time in history that a team got rid of its starting QB without getting anything in return and without the player being involved in some sort of scandal.
McCoy wasn’t traded for anything, and the salary cap savings from cutting him won’t help the team at all. McCoy didn’t get caught beating up old ladies or imposing himself on massage therapists.
The Cardinals just decided that they didn’t want their starting QB anymore. McCoy isn’t amazing, or even particularly good, but then why was he the starting QB in the first place? Why not just bench McCoy instead of cutting him?
Because McCoy is competent at his job. The Cardinals need to lose as many games as possible, and can’t risk McCoy being good enough to win them 5 or 6 games this season. They really, really need to lose games this season so that they can get rid of their supposed “Franchise” QB, Kyler Murray.
The reason Murray hasn’t been mentioned so far in this article is simple- there’s no way in hell that Murray is going to play this season. Murray tore his ACL late last season and is still recovering from the injury. If I was a betting man, I’d bet that Murray will never play for the Cardinals again.
Have you ever known someone that got married and regretted it almost instantly? Like when Kim Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries for 2 or 3 months?
Well, the Cardinals gave Kyler Murrary a 230 million dollar contract extension last July, and regretted it almost instantly.
At the time, the Cardinals were criticized because they put a clause in Murray’s contract requiring him to study film for a certain number hours of week. Critics called this clause racist, or something, and the Cardinals backtracked on the clause.
But you know what the clause really said? It said we don’t believe in you, so we’re trying to give ourselves an out when you fail.
It was the equivalent of having a pre-nup lawyer present at your engagement photo shoot.
The Cardinals knew they were making a mistake giving Murray a big contract, and made it anyway. They hoped that marriage would solve all of their problems. It didn’t.
Sadly, and predictably, it just made it nearly impossible for the Cardinals to get out of their troubled relationship without experiencing massive financial losses.
Now, as a result, the Cardinals need to be horrible this year so that they can get the #1 pick and draft a new QB to replace Murray. Consider Colt McCoy the best friend or sibling that gets cut off when they tried to warn you not to tie the knot with someone that you were already having problems with.
And what will the end result of this troubled marriage be? Most likely a new QB and a new head coach in 2024. See you next year Cardinals fans. Maybe spend this season developing a hobby or starting a side hustle.
As someone who lived through the 76ers’ tanking years, I can tell you that a tanking team isn’t worth your time, money, or attention. If the fans stop buying tickets and watching games this year, I can guarantee that the Cardinals’ leadership will do everything that they can to be competitive next year.
But if Cardinals fans keep paying for, and paying attention to, a shitty product? Then expect more tanking in the years to come. ‘
Your friend at the end of the bar who’s very happy that he isn’t a Cardinals fan,
Josh