Cardinals Optimistic as Rebuild Continues
ARIZONA — They tore it all down, and for good reason.
Many times in the NFL, a general manager will convince themselves that a roster isn’t that massively far away from competing again and will try to place proverbial band-aids on the roster in hopes of somehow fighting for a postseason spot.
The Arizona Cardinals had enough of the Steve Keim/Kliff Kingsbury era and decided to start anew with Monti Ossenfort/Jonathan Gannon last offseason.
Arizona – coming off a 4-13 campaign where nearly nothing went right – was just one season removed from a postseason berth. The 2022 Cardinals had expectations to go further, though it quickly became clear the team wasn’t quite what anybody had thought.
There was a chance Ossenfort would continue rolling the dice on big name veterans past their prime, and in a business that operates on results, not many would have blamed him.
Yet Arizona decided to launch a full rebuild of the roster, parting with their biggest names in free agency before letting go of other prominent faces throughout the summer.
The end result was the same (4-13), though there’s a strong sense of hope and optimism moving into the future that was nowhere near matched at this point last offseason.
“It’s been fantastic working with Monti this last year. That’s why I was almost late coming down,” Gannon said at his end of season press conference.
