Photo Credit: PHOENIX Magazine
Every year, hope springs eternal in the desert. Every year, something finds a way to remind us that being an Arizona Cardinals fan is less a hobby and more a coping mechanism. This year’s NFLPA report card, a survey of 1,759 NFL players grading all 32 franchises, is the latest reminder that while things may be improving on the field, something remains deeply, stubbornly broken at the top.
Let’s start with the good news, because Cardinals fans deserve it after decades of heartbreak. The coaching staff? Actually solid. Head coach Jonathan Gannon pulled a B+ (ironic since they have since parted ways with him), the position coaches earned a B+, and the strength coaches checked in at B-. The training staff grades out at a respectable B-, and the general manager received a B. For once, the football people seem to be doing the football things reasonably well. Even the home field, State Farm Stadium, one of the genuinely great venues in the league, earned a B.
Photo Credit: Trip Advisor
Now. The locker room got an F-. The weight room, a D+. The training room, a D+. Treatment of families, i.e. the way a franchise treats the people who matter most to its players, came in at a D+.
But none of that compares to the category that brings it all into brutal focus: Team Ownership. An F. Not a D. Not a C-. A flat F.
Cardinals owner Michael Bidwell. Photo Credit: Arizona Republic
There it is. The thread that runs through every rebuild that never quite finishes, every promising draft pick who walks out the door, every coaching staff that arrives with momentum and quietly burns out. You can hire good coordinators. You can draft well. You can build a culture from the bottom up. But when the players themselves, the ones in the building every single day, look at ownership and hand them the worst possible grade, it tells you everything about the ceiling this franchise keeps bumping its head against.
Arizona is a state on the rise. The economy is booming, the fanbase is loyal beyond all reasonable expectations, and the football talent is starting to accumulate. But until ownership matches the ambition of the city around them, Cardinals fans will keep doing what we’ve always done: showing up, hoping, and sighing deeply somewhere around Week 10.
Same old Cardinals. And yet somehow, we’ll be back next August. We always are.