The Cardinals entered the 2025 season in need of a big comeback from Kyler Murray and Jonathan Gannon. What they got was a masterclass in tanking, bookended by Murray and Gannon losing their jobs. Jacoby Brissett made the “Fantasy in Bio” folks happy but went 1-11 as a starter. They are now back at square one.
▶ 2025 Arizona Cardinals Stats (Rank)
- Points per game: 20.9 (23rd)
- Total yards per game: 325.8 (19th)
- Plays per game: 63.2 (21st)
- Dropbacks per game: 46.8 (1st)
- Dropback EPA per play: 0.04 (20th)
- Designed rush attempts per game: 20.2 (32nd)
- Rush EPA per play: -0.14 (29th)
▶ Cardinals tab Mike LaFleur as their next boss
Gannon failed to find an OC who could turn Kyler Murray‘s career around and things were even worse on defense, which Gannon was brought in to fix. Over the past three years, Arizona has ranked 30th in EPA per play allowed. Gannon crumbled in a make-or-break season and the Cardinals hired Rams OC Mike LaFleur as their next head coach. LaFleur had two failed seasons as the Jets’ offensive coordinator under his belt before joining the Rams in 2023. He oversaw a top-10 scoring offense in his first season, though that fell to 20th in 2024. If you watched a single Rams game last year, you know they ran circles around the league, easily leading in both points and yards per game. Sean McVay understandably gets most of the credit for this, but even learning under the best mind in football is a feather in LaFleur’s cap. Bringing in Nathaniel Hackett as his offensive coordinator… not so much.
LaFleur surprisingly retained DC Nick Rallis, who held that title throughout Gannon’s tenure with the team. Though he wasn’t as responsible for the defense as Gannon, one would imagine he joins LaFleur’s staff on an incredibly short leash.
▶ Passing Game
QB: Jacoby Brissett, Gardner Minshew, Carson Beck
WR: Marvin Harrison Jr., Xavier Weaver
WR: Michael Wilson, Devin Duvernay
WR: Kendrick Bourne, Jalen Brooks
TE: Trey McBride, Tip Reiman
Murray’s time as the starter only lasted five weeks before a foot injury put him on the bench. His poor play, however, kept him there. Brissett made the final 12 starts and the team went ultra giga nuclear mega turbo pass-heavy.
From Week 6 onward, Arizona logged a +5% pass rate over expected and Brissett averaged 281 yards at over 40 attempts per game. That won’t happen again. The team has since changed play-callers and spent on Tyler Allgeier in free agency before drafting Jeremiyah Love with the No. 3 overall pick. That level of pass-heavy is likely to be left in 2025. However, Arizona’s defense won’t get better overnight and Brissett is, at his core, a volume-based passer. He was serviceable as a distributor, ranking 14th in CPOE and 17th in PFF’s accurate throw rate. While not much more than a bridge quarterback, fantasy managers will be hoping for 17 games of Brissett. If he does get benched, the team could take a look at third-round rookie Carson Beck. The former Hurricane earned PFF’s No. 38 passing grade in his final season of college ball and has questionable arm talent following a 2024 elbow surgery.
God willing, Brissett gets to rip it for 17 games, giving us another historic McBride season. McBride’s 126 receptions were good for the single-season tight end record. With 1,239 yards and 11 scores, he posted the third-best fantasy season at his position in the history of football. McBride caught 10 touchdown passes from Brissett. He had seven career touchdown receptions before Brissett took over. Early Best Ball drafts have McBride as the TE2, likely based on concerns that Beck or Minshew will earn some starts. Even if McBride’s stats do take a hit down the stretch, a third-round pick is a small price to pay for his elite production.
It’s not entirely clear who the team’s No. 2 pass-catcher and WR1 is. Michael Wilson comfortably led the room in all receiving categories last year with a 78-1,006-7 line. But he did so while playing five more games than Marvin Harrison Jr. His splits with and without MHJ are jaw-dropping.
Wilson also averaged a dismal 3.8 PPR points per game in Murray’s five starts compared to 16.8 points with Brissett under center. Even when looking at just Brissett starts, Wilson’s per-route numbers were good, but not elite. He averaged 2.04 YPRR and was targeted on 22.8 percent of his routes. Those numbers, however, are far better than MHJ’s marks of 1.5 and 19.6 percent. Fittingly, both players logged 29 percent contested target rates and ESPN’s player tracking data assigned them both Open Scores of exactly 56. The biggest difference is that Wilson reeled in 68 percent of his contested targets. Harrison Jr. corralled a paltry 25 percent of those looks. At this point in their career, both players are boundary wideouts who can’t separate from defensive backs. Wilson is simply better at bringing down the hard-fought targets.
Kendrick Bourne is an upgrade at WR3 for the Cardinals, but he isn’t likely to make an impact for fantasy purposes. Bourne erupted for back-to-back 142-yard games early in 2025 when the 49ers were dealing with several injuries at wide receiver. He quickly vanished from the wideout rotation once the team got healthy. Bourne could pop up for a spike week or two this year, but only if someone ahead of him on the depth chart goes down.
▶ Running Game
RB: Jeremiyah Love, Tyler Allgeier, James Conner, Trey Benson
OL (L-R): Paris Johnson Jr., Isaac Seumalo, Hjalte Froholdt, Chase Bissontis, Elijah Wilkinson
There isn’t much to say about the Cardinals’ non-existent 2025 run game. The team’s leading rushers in order were Michael Carter, Emari Demercado, and Bam Knight. James Conner and Trey Benson combined for seven games. Both backs are still on the roster — for now — but have been replaced by Jeremiyah Love and Tyler Allgeier. Love, the No. 3 overall pick, was a home run machine at Notre Dame. He earned 15+ yards on 11.6 percent of his attempts in 2025 and finished second in the country in breakaway yards (726). Love was also a strong pass-catcher, logging 55 receptions, 517 yards, and five touchdowns in his two seasons as a starter. Backed by elite draft capital, even a bad environment for running back production shouldn’t be a major issue for Love, who currently goes off the board as the RB13.
The bigger question for Love is if he will get the goal line work. Allgeier isn’t a threat to out-carry the rookie, but he has been a thorn in the side of Bijan Robinson drafters for years. Even in Robinson’s RB1 overall 2025 campaign, Allgeier saw 31 red zone carries to 32 for Robinson. They tied at seven inside-the-five totes a piece. As a team, the Cardinals ranked 25th in I5 carries and 30th in red zone attempts last year. There aren’t enough high-value touches to go around for Love to give half of them away to a veteran backup.
The Cardinals have a pair of potential trade candidates behind Allgeier. Given their investments at the position this offseason, the team has clearly thrown in the towel on Trey Benson. He could be an interesting dart throw for another team. James Conner, on the other hand, took a pay cut to stay in Arizona. The only way to move on from him is also through a trade. Conner ran for over 1,000 yards in back-to-back seasons before missing most of 2025. He also caught 47 passes for 414 yards in 2024. When healthy, Conner is still a strong option as a team’s lead back. Arizona should be the first call any GM makes if their starting back goes down in training camp.
▶ 2026 Arizona Cardinals Win Total
DraftKings Over/Under: 3.5
Pick: Over (-140)
One of the biggest stories of the offseason has been the coaching turnover. While a few teams made more flashy hires than the Cardinals, Arizona took the layup and brought on an offensive mind who had just learned under Sean McVay and found great success while doing so. Now it’s his job to squeeze one more win out of this roster than Gannon did in 2025. With DraftKings having one of the best prices on the market for Over 3.5, I’m comfortable betting on LaFleur to hit four.
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