There’s noise outside of the Arizona Cardinals’ facility in Tempe.
Aside from birds chirping and ambience of cars commuting from nearby streets, an overwhelming majority of NFL media and fans are down on the Cardinals’ chances to play well in 2026.
The prospects of this season don’t shake out well. The Cardinals are under a rookie head coach, a bridge quarterback and a shaky defense that didn’t improve much on their side of the ball over the course of the offseason. All while having one of the league’s toughest strengths of schedule and playing in a highly competitive NFC West.
The path to a postseason, according to most, is a forgone dream. There’s already talk about the Cardinals making trades at the midway deadline to prepare for the 2027 season.
Yet nearly 60% of games in the NFL, on average, come down to one possession. Arizona, for as large of underdogs as they are, aren’t far behind top teams in the league.
That’s reality, at least for now when records are 0-0.
“No, we’re not concerned about the noise,” head coach Mike LaFleur said at his Wednesday press conference.
Much of the excitement around the Cardinals and their potential to play spoiler this season rests on the shoulders of LaFleur, who hails from prestigious offensive minds. Arizona took a massive swing at the plate with another first-time coach running the show, though his potential to be the next premier play-calling head coach is legitimate.
His quarterback in Jacoby Brissett also echoed a similar sentiment when asked if it matters if they’re considered underdogs.
“Nope. Zero,” he said before being asked what he wants to prove this season:
“It’s literally not about me. I want to go out there and win. The guys in the locker room want to go out there and win, and I think that’s our main focus.”
Brissett’s capable of running LaFleur’s offense, having a quick ability to diagnose defenses and spread the ball around to pristine playmakers without turning the ball over often. Out of a quarterback in LaFleur’s offense, that’s all you can ask for out of Brissett.
The biggest question mark resides on the defensive side of the ball, where coordinator Nick Rallis was brought back for a fourth season. Quite honestly his unit has numerous strides to make if the Cardinals will be competitive, and it’s possible he’s on the hot seat entering 2026.
“Ignore the noise. We’re focused on what do we have to do right now to get ourselves prepared for Sunday,” Rallis told reporters.
“There a lot of things externally that do matter to people, and everyone’s got different stuff. Career aspirations or money or just outside perspective and reputation. So it is a real thing, but at the end of the day the result we want is to win games, and in order to win games you got to play good defense,” said Rallis.
“So the best way to go about that is, where do we hold our attention in the moment? If we’re putting our attention on anything but preparing for the Chargers, it’s going to take us away from maximizing that opportunity on Sunday. Easier said than done, but that is 100% of what this building is about — being where your feet are and attacking whatever we’re in — meetings, walk-through, practice, recovery, all of that.”
There’s sure a lot of belief within the Cardinals’ building, as it should be. Whether it’s a mistake or not for everybody else outside of those walls is entirely up to their performance.
Add us as a preferred source on Google
