Cardinals Could Change Draft Plans From Last Year

The Arizona Cardinals could very well evade all of the trade talk.

ARIZONA -- All eyes are on the Arizona Cardinals.

We're ten days removed from the 2024 NFL Draft, and with three quarterbacks expected to go ahead of Arizona's No. 4 pick, Cardinals GM Monti Ossenfort unofficially holds the keys to the draft.

Arizona could opt to stay and pick a cornerstone player - likely an elite receiver prospect such as Marvin Harrison Jr. - or they could move down with a team desperately in search of their next franchise quarterback.

Those possibilities haven't changed since Arizona's 4-13 season ended and they secured the No. 4 overall selection, though the back and forth discourse of "trade or don't trade" will eventually come to an end once the Cardinals are finally on the clock.

After Ossenfort recently told reporters he was open/looking to move down, one NFL insider suggests the Cardinals could be closer to staying put than previously thought.

"The Arizona Cardinals aren’t just going to move to move. The more I’ve talked to people, the more I think Ossenfort, who was aggressive in going down and up the board in his first draft running a team, is considering staying at 4 and picking," wrote NFL insider Albert Breer, who dove deeper into his thoughts on why.

"It might be a GM playing poker, and trying to smoke out better offers. But, it could also be that he really likes the player who’ll be there for him.

"What’s unique about Arizona’s position is that, despite picking fourth, the Cardinals will almost certainly have an opportunity to pick the best nonquarterback in this year’s class. What a few people have said to me over the past few months, to that end, is that Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr. would be a wheelhouse pick for Ossenfort, the same way Harrison’s ex-teammate Paris Johnson Jr. was in 2023.

"What does that mean? Well, being from the New England system, Ossenfort really does value guys who fit the suit, and fill physical prototypes. Harrison, who Ohio State coaches would tell you has been clocked at around 4.35 in the 40-yard dash at 6’3” and 209 pounds, certainly fits that bill. He also is considered a very high character player, particularly from a work-ethic standpoint, which checks another important box for Ossenfort.

"So Ossenfort could sit there and pick him. Or set up for the franchise to have multiple first-round picks again in 2025 with a trade down, or even three first-rounders this year, if they were to swap spots with Minnesota. All of that is in front of the Cardinals.

“We will be ready to pick a player,” Ossenfort told me a few weeks back. “I know that. We’ll have our draft board set and we’ll be ready to pick a player and that’s going to be up to the other teams to decide that there’s a guy that if they want to come up and do a trade. We are. Inevitably, we’ll always be ready to pick when it’s our turn, and we’ll also be ready to listen to any phone calls that come in should there be interest in coming up on our pick.”

The Cardinals simply are in a win-win. Arizona either sticks and grabs one of the draft's best players or cashes out in a major way on April 25 thanks to a quarterback-needy team looking to mortgage everything to make the leap.

Either way, Arizona and its fans should be quite ecstatic.