By Scott Kacsmar
The Arizona Cardinals were already coming off a rough 4-13 season where they fired head coach Kliff Kingsbury and lost quarterback Kyler Murray to a torn ACL.
Now every oddsmaker is putting the Cardinals dead last in the 2023 NFL season. No team has a lower over/under win total (4.5 wins) or worse odds for winning the Super Bowl (+20000).
Is this team a lock for the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft, which would presumably be USC quarterback Caleb Williams? We look back at 2022’s mess, how this year could be worse, and the best Cardinals bets for 2023.
2022 Season Recap: Pushed Off the Kliff
Historians are going to look back at that 7-0 start to the 2021 season and wonder how the heck that happened during this era of Cardinals football. It was really the only stretch where Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray looked the part of a competent head coach and franchise quarterback duo.
The Cardinals infamously finished 4-7 in 2021, were embarrassed in the playoffs by the Rams, then had a disappointing start to 2022. In Week 1, the Cardinals relentlessly blitzed Patrick Mahomes as if they had never studied his game before. Arizona lost 44-21, a sign of things to come for a defense that ranked 31st in points allowed.
The one highlight was Murray’s wild 16-point comeback in the fourth quarter against the Raiders in Week 2 as the Cardinals pulled off the rare “8+8” comeback where you must score a pair of touchdowns and 2-point conversions just to tie. Murray looked like Houdini on a conversion that took 20 seconds from snap to score. Then the Raiders fumbled in overtime and that was returned for a game-winning touchdown by the Cardinals.
But the only other performance of note was taking the undefeated Eagles to the wire in Week 5. The Eagles never trailed after halftime on their way to starting 8-0, but Arizona was the only team to challenge them in that stretch. While Arizona never led, it was a 17-17 game in the fourth quarter before the Eagles took a late lead. Murray tried to answer, but the Cardinals missed a 43-yard field goal with 17 seconds left in a 20-17 loss.
Arizona’s last win of the season came against the Rams in Week 10, a game missing Matthew Stafford, and one where Cooper Kupp left with a season-ending injury. The one positive the Cardinals can say in the Kingsbury era was that they defended Kupp better than anyone. Arizona held Kupp under 65 yards in 4-of-5 meetings since 2021. The rest of the NFL is 0-for-25 in doing that to Kupp since 2021.
After losing 25-24 to the Chargers on a late 2-point conversion, the 4-8 Cardinals were just trying to get through the season unscathed in a Monday night game against the Patriots. Unfortunately, Murray tore his ACL in the first quarter, ending his season and possibly his time as the team’s starting quarterback.
The Cardinals finished out the season with Colt McCoy, Trace McSorley, and David Blough at quarterback. Naturally, they lost their remaining games, though they did make the Buccaneers fight for it on Christmas night, and they lost 20-19 to the Falcons on a last-second field goal.
With the season in the books, the Cardinals fired Kingsbury after he compiled a 28-37-1 (.432) record in the regular season and 0-1 in the playoffs. One of the oddities about Kingsbury’s tenure is that Arizona was 10-21-1 SU in home games, the second-worst record in the NFL since 2019.
Offseason Review
It was the right time to move on from Kingsbury. While there were some interesting names in this year’s coaching cycle, the Cardinals waited patiently to hire Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, who was coming off a Super Bowl loss where his team blew another double-digit lead and badly blew some coverages in the fourth quarter.
It would not be fair to only judge him by one game against Patrick Mahomes, but this was a trend in Philadelphia his last two seasons as coordinator. Good teams with quarterbacks playing well shredded his scheme apart, and it did not matter if the pass rush had 70 sacks or not. The Eagles were 0-7 against teams with 10-plus wins and a quarterback who ranked in the top 15 in QBR.
In those games, the Eagles allowed an average of 32.9 points per game, and all seven opposing quarterbacks completed at least 73% of their passes against the Eagles’ defense.
Believing in Gannon is a tough sell, and it is even tougher when he takes over a roster that has no real quarterback, lost its leading receiver (DeAndre Hopkins), and lost its best pass rusher to retirement (J.J. Watt). Not only did Watt have 12.5 sacks, but the Cardinals have lost their defenders who ranked second and third in sacks in Zach Allen (5.5) and Isaiah Simmons (4.0). That’s 22 of the team’s paltry 36 sacks gone.
We could say Marquise Brown will step up in his second season with the team to take over for Hopkins as the new No. 1 after Brown was injured last year. But who is going to throw him the ball? We get into the quarterback debacle in the next section.
Zach Ertz is one of the oldest tight ends in the league (33 in November) and is coming off injury. James Conner is talented but struggles to stay healthy at running back. The offensive line may not even work in theory let alone practice, and butts aren’t filling in seats to watch a rookie right tackle (Paris Johnson Jr.) that Kyler Murray wanted the team to draft while he plays Call of Duty this year.
If you asked a football fan to name a starter on this Arizona defense as if their life depended on it, you better hope they know Budda Baker and Zaven Collins are still in town. Collins has not even lived up to his first-round pick status in 2021 yet.
Markus Golden left for the Steelers, meaning 65 quarterback hits disappeared with Watt, Allen, and Golden gone. No one else on this defense had more than 6 quarterback hits last year.
To make matters worse, this is an inexperienced coaching staff joining Gannon. Offensive coordinator Drew Petzing is 36 years old and coached the Cleveland quarterbacks last year. He did a good job with Jacoby Brissett, and maybe we can’t blame him for not wanting to be around Deshaun Watson that much. But he has no play-calling experience.
Defensive coordinator Nick Rallis comes over from Philadelphia where he coached linebackers under Gannon, so they at least know each other. Arizona’s big free-agent addition of linebacker Kyzir White from Philadelphia does not scream plan a parade for February.
This really has a chance to be a dumpster fire the likes of which Arizona has not seen since the Steve Wilks-Josh Rosen year in 2018 (3-13 with the No. 32 offense and No. 26 defense).
Is it by design?
This Year’s Area of Interest: Is This Team Trying to Tank?
Suck for Luck. Tank for Tua. Tank for Trevor. Those were the names of some famous “tank campaigns” for teams looking to get a No. 1 pick and draft a franchise-changing quarterback.
Can “Crumble for Caleb” or “Collapse for Caleb” be the chant in Arizona this year? USC quarterback Caleb Williams is the betting favorite to repeat as Heisman Trophy winner and the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft. That would be quite the reward for a terrible season and a way to free themselves of the Murray era for good.
Teams never want to advocate for or be accused of tanking for obvious reasons, but after Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the Miami Dolphins alleged tanking bonuses, you have to at least question if a front office would be down for it as long as it looks subtly done. The players and coaches fighting for their jobs will want no part of a future that may not include them, but ownership is a different story.
It is one thing for the Cardinals to not bring back Hopkins at wide receiver with younger players on the roster. Watt retired, and a talent like that is hard to replace. But trading away Isaiah Simmons and Josh Jones this week, then cutting quarterback Colt McCoy sure looks like a team that is looking to 2024 and past this season.
McCoy could have easily been a veteran starter for this team until Murray came back if he was going to come back at all this year. Murray is on the PUP list, meaning he is out for at least the first four games this season.
But releasing McCoy now is a surprise move, especially when you traded for Joshua Dobbs, a journeyman with 2 starts since entering the league in 2017, just weeks before the season. That is a lot of camp and practices missed for someone who could start Week 1 now against Washington.
Dobbs is not starter material. He was an emergency starter for the Titans last year after Ryan Tannehill was injured and Malik Willis could not throw for 100 yards in any game. Dobbs coughed up a game-losing fumble in Jacksonville to lose the AFC South to the Jaguars in Week 18. This is not going to go well at all.
The other option without Murray is to go with fifth-round rookie Clayton Tune from Houston where he played since 2018. Tune threw for 11,994 yards and 104 touchdowns at Houston where he did keep increasing his production each season. But the scouting reports make him sound like a real project with accuracy issues.
Tune saw a good amount of preseason action, completing 34-of-59 passes for 353 yards, which is only 5.98 yards per attempt. With the unreliability of Dobbs, we could see some Tune starts this year. That could mean badly thrown deep balls to Marquise Brown and screen passes to Rondale Moore that lose a yard.
The Cardinals having the worst passing offense in 2023 looks very probable. Maybe that is by design, because when you put this lineup on the field, what are you really saying about your chances this year?
Best Bets for the 2023 Cardinals
You probably know where this is heading as we are all in for under 4.5 wins for Arizona this year. But is Arizona going to finish with the worst record in the NFL?
Since 2002, the team ranked last in preseason win total (tiebreaker based on worst Super Bowl odds) has had a losing record in 19-of-21 seasons. Only the 2004 Chargers (12-4) and 2008 Falcons (11-5) had winning records, and unless Clayton Tune is the next Drew Brees or Matt Ryan, that’s not happening in Arizona this year.
We should also note that the 2011 Colts had their lines removed due to the uncertainty over whether Peyton Manning would play that year. He did not, and the Colts finished 2-14 to earn the No. 1 pick and draft Andrew Luck. So, we will use Carolina (O/U 4.5 wins, finished 6-10 in Cam Newton’s rookie year) as the team projected to finish last for 2011.
Twelve of the 21 teams finished with under 4.5 wins, but only the 2016 Browns and 2020 Jaguars finished with the worst record to earn the No. 1 pick in the draft. The Browns drafted Myles Garrett in 2017 and the Jaguars selected Trevor Lawrence in 2021.
The Texans almost pulled this off last year, but they decided to go for the win in Week 18 and the Bears ended up with the No. 1 pick. But Houston’s season will be something Arizona fans watch carefully as the Cardinals own Houston’s first-round pick thanks to the Will Anderson trade on draft night.
It is realistic for the Cardinals to go into the 2024 draft with picks No. 1 and No. 2 thanks to the Texans, who are not expected to do well this year. That could be a quick fix in the draft for Arizona with selections of Caleb Williams and Ohio State wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. if they wanted to go that route.
But another reason to like Arizona to finish with the worst record is the team will play in Houston in Week 11 in what could be the year’s Toilet Bowl. The Cardinals also face the Bears in Chicago, and they of course have a pair of games with the Rams, who are also projected to do poorly this year.
If the tank is indeed on, then you might as well take a shot at the Cardinals finishing with the fewest wins this season. They are the only team not favored in a single game this year.
On the bright side for Arizona fans, that 2024 draft is going to be a franchise-changing weekend. Just have to get through what should be a truly unwatchable season first.
NFL Pick: Arizona Cardinals under 4.5 wins (-142 at FanDuel)
NFL Pick: Arizona Cardinals to have fewest regular season wins (+220 at DraftKings)
