After Brutal 2025 Season, Cardinals CB Making 'Huge Strides'

ARIZONA — The Arizona Cardinals need a bounceback season from numerous people up and down the roster.

Max Melton included.

After flashing some potential as a second-round pick, 2025 was set to be a major step forward for the Rutgers product. Instead, Melton finished near the bottom of several advanced metrics.

It wasn't a season anybody had hoped for after Melton was benched down the stretch of 2025, though OTAs (and today mandatory minicamp) gives new opportunity.

Cardinals defensive coordinator Nick Rallis says he's ran with it.

"Yeah, he's taken huge strides in a couple different ways. From a technique standpoint, there's been a couple things that were very like, 'Hey, we got to get this improved.' And you just see him, like, even over the course of spring, it wasn't perfect, and then as time went, you really saw him making strides with his technique," Rallis said of Melton.

"I think the biggest thing with him is just understanding the stress and the strength of each call, and knowing, 'where do I have to win on this, and where can I take a risk?' I've seen a huge growth in terms of understanding, like deep understanding, of when calls are going to be called, and what they're really doing. If I have to go win a stressful down, or if I have help, and I can go make a play on a ball like this. So huge strides in several ways for Max."

The uphill climb to playing time won't be easy. Faces such as Will Johnson and Denzel Burke figure to be favorites to play on the outside while names in Sean Murphy-Bunting and Starling Thomas are returning from injury.

Garrett Williams is currently projected to miss the beginning of the season but is sure to be inserted back into the lineup once full availability hits.

Needless to say, there's plenty of mouths to feed in the cornerback room.

"Everybody's competing right now. We don't need to define anything. I talked to the players about that. We go through phases of roles, and right now we're in a competing phase. We'll eventually get to the point where we define them, and that changes every week. But it's really good competition there," Rallis continued.

"That's a great problem to have. What I'm seeing from those guys though is we're getting into a lot of, year two, year three, year four with a lot of those guys, and I'm seeing growth, I'm seeing a different comfort level right now from a technique perspective, communication, so I've been very pleased to see how those guys have improved their game this spring."

Though Melton finished last season on a fairly rocky note, 2026 seems to be a new opportunity.

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