Swing and a miss – Can the Cardinals’ owner finally get it right?

When the Cardinal owner is interviewing head coaching candidates for the fourth time in eight years, I wonder what questions he asks. The process, from what I’ve been told by the agent community, is often (though not always) done first via Zoom. I have to wonder if the Owner just wants to hear things in the interview that simply suit his beliefs, because clearly the strategy he’s been using hasn’t been good (I’m being kind). 

With a 46-86 record since 2018, are we to believe he’s finally going to get it right? When you are a well-run organization, “hope” is not in the DNA. In this day and age of “sportswashing” through the media, we hear all sorts of good about what teams do off the field in the community, while the product being presented to us is well below awful. We can rant, rail, criticize all day long, and they simply don’t care. They may say they do, but when TV ratings are the highest since the mid-80s (no one seems to mention that only 12 teams sold out every game this season), the blind say, “They must be as well run as every other team because they are under the same brand.” Um, no.   

Given this owner’s recent hiring history, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t yet another coordinator. A coordinator may look great on the outside, but as we’ve seen, here it’s not a given that it will work out. Matt Nagy sounds great, but is Patrick Mahomes walking through the door with him? Klint Kubiak had a proven veteran QB and the best wide receiver in football. What kind of roster will the next head coach have to work with in Arizona versus the six other jobs that are open? Bruce Arians and Ken Whisenhunt had good staffs. and drafts built around them. I’m not saying that a turnaround can’t happen, but the odds of the Arizona Cardinals ever being one of the most successful teams ON THE FIELD simply don’t add up. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. 

Since this owner has it all figured out, I won’t attempt to nail down who your Cardinals’ next head coach will be; I will likely be copying and pasting some of this Three Dot column three years from now. 

The scoreboard doesn’t lie…