Will Cardinals Hit Reset Button This Offseason?
We're less than a week away until the Arizona Cardinals will make decisions on a plethora of pending free agents in what will be the first of a handful of major building blocks for the 2023 season.
Decisions made in free agency will lay the road map for what Arizona wants to do in the 2023 NFL Draft, and before you know it, the Cardinals will be in mini-camp.
It's a rather large offseason for Arizona under a brand new regime. General manager Monti Ossenfort and head coach Jonathan Gannon - both first-timers in their new roles - will try to turn around a 4-13 football team.
The most important ingredient to their success in quarterback Kyler Murray tore his ACL late last season and his timetable for return isn't known, though the Cardinals won't be rushing him back to action after such a significant injury.
"I told Kyler I'm not gonna rush him back because part of what makes Kyler so elite is his legs. So when he's ready to play, he'll play. I don't know exactly the timetable right now. Everyone heals a little bit differently. Everyone comes back from rehab a little differently, and everyone's different in that aspect," said Gannon last week at the NFL Combine.
"I like what he's doing right now to get himself ready to go - I've told the story the guy's attacking his rehab. He wants to be out there as fast as he can. As soon as he's ready then we'll put him out there but if he's not ready to go we'll have a plan in place to play and win games with who we have playing quarterback for us."
An injured Murray isn't the only question mark for the Cardinals in 2023, but would a fully healthy quarterback perhaps change how next season is viewed?
This was a football team that started with a 10-2 record and made the postseason just the year before with much of the same roster. Now, turnover on both sides of the ball threatens for a different Cardinals team to take the field moving forward.
Pro Football Focus says Arizona's biggest question to answer is if they'll fully commit to hitting the reset button.
"New head coach, new general manager and a star quarterback on the shelf for an indeterminate amount of time — if the Cardinals are ever going to jump into a full rebuild, now is the time," said Sam Monson.
"Arizona’s roster needs a lot of work. They are expected to trade away DeAndre Hopkins this offseason, and they might also be smart to trade down from No. 3 overall in the draft to build a bigger cache of picks to really attack the weaknesses of the roster. The Cardinals' best path forward may be to plan an ugly 2023 in order to earnestly build in 2024."
That's been a debate between Cardinals fans after the season, and apparently between Gannon-Ossenfort, too.
When asked if he felt the Cardinals were going to enter a rebuild year at his introductory press conference, Gannon offered the following:
“I’m never going to put a ceiling or a floor on any roster or any player that is under my watch. I know that there is work to be done, but I like the core pieces here. Through Monti and I—and Michael— we’re going to turn over every stone that we can to help improve the roster.
"Funny little story, we were in the interview on Monday and Monti asked me a question. I asked him the question right back, ‘Well what do you think about that Monti?’ He says, ‘Well, I want to hear what you say first.’ I told him, and he disagreed a little bit and I said, ‘Well, I understand your point, but here’s my point.’ I think that we’re going to have a really good relationship. Here’s where we did not disagree on is we’re going to do everything that we can to put the best people out there to win games.
"There’s different ways to do that and we will explore all those options, but that’s what we’re going to do. To summarize that, I’m excited about the people that we have here, and I’m excited about who we need to add.”
Zach Allen and Byron Murphy - the team's top free agents - weren't franchise tagged. DeAndre Hopkins, at this point in time, is likely to be traded. The Cardinals are waving goodbye to Rodney Hudson via retirement with three other starting linemen hitting free agency - D.J. Humphries is the only initial starting OL under contract for 2023.
There's room for change in Arizona. Plenty of it. We'll see if the Cardinals believe they're capable of turning things around quickly, or if they believe a rebuild is in order.
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