Some unsolicited advice for president of Cardinals
There are two reasons to place ourselves in another person’s shoes:
1. To empathize with their struggles and gain understanding of what they might be facing. Or ...
2. So we can tell them what they should do.
There’s grace in the first option and a certain amount of arrogance in the second. Since this is a column about the state of the Cardinals and the looming decisions they face, I’ll go with the second reason.
At 2-8, the Cardinals are certain to miss the postseason for a third consecutive year. At some point soon – hopefully before he serves as the grand marshal of the Fiesta Bowl parade on Dec. 29 – team President Michael Bidwill will break his silence and tell us his vision for im- Ch. 10.
proving what might be the worst team the franchise has fielded since moving to Arizona in 1988.
That’s an especially dubious “accomplishment” since the team has lost at least 10 games 15 times in their previous 30 seasons here.
If I’m Bidwill, I tell fans something like this:
First, I’d like to say I’m as disappointed and surprised by this season as you are. Even with a new coaching staff and a new quarterback, I never dreamed we would lose eight of our first 10 games.
Obviously, we haven’t done a good enough job of evaluating players and coaching them. The blame starts with me. As you know, I’m a hands-on manager. I interview draft prospects. I sign off on decisions made in free agency. I was with General Manager Steve Keim every step of the way in our search to replace Bruce Arians.
So to blame Steve Keim and coach Steve Wilks for everything that’s gone on this season is unfair.
We all could have been much better at our jobs.
But I don’t think cleaning house is warranted.
That doesn’t mean any of us should not admit our roles in helping us descend to this point. To do so would mean we lack the self-awareness necessary for improvement.
Where did we go wrong? Where were mistakes made? How can we avoid them in the future?
(Those are rhetorical questions. Believe me, I’ve heard your opinions.)
I obviously don’t like where we are as a team. But I have been impressed that this team continues to play hard for coach Wilks. We battled back to beat the 49ers at home. We played our best game of the year in Kansas City. We made a fourthquarter comeback against the Raiders.
No, we didn’t win two of those games. But, unfortunately, I know what it looks like when players have given up on the coach. This team hasn’t, so I’m inclined to bring coach Wilks back in 2019.
That said, we need to figure out how to improve. We started that during the season with the change in offensive coordinators. That group has looked better under Byron Leftwich, and I’m interested to know what long-term plans he has for quarterback Josh Rosen and the style of offense we should run.
Defensively, I’d like to know why we continued to be gouged by the run, and why three first-round picks didn’t make consistent contributions this year.
These obviously are questions for Steve Keim, too. I trust his talent-evaluation skills. People tend to forget he’s the one who drafted players like David Johnson, Budda Baker and Markus Golden. He engineered trades that brought us Carson Palmer and Chandler Jones. The man didn’t all of a sudden get dumb after the 2015 season.
But clearly, we have to find out why we have continued to fail in building an offensive line. We are not identifying or developing talent. If I have to make additions to our scouting staff, like adding a senior member with expertise in the offensive line, I will.
As a scouting staff, we need to take a long look at how we evaluate draft prospects. Too often, we’re left plugging holes with free agents with histories of injuries.
That said, we have resources in place to make great improvement in 2019. We finally have a talented young quarterback. We will be picking high in the draft. And while I don’t like talking about money and cap space, you probably know that others have written we will have $63 million or so in cap space to start the 2019 offseason.
So to everyone who continues to attend our games and watch them on television, stick with us. I know it’s been hard to do that this year.