Arizona Cardinals seven-round 2020 NFL mock draft

The Arizona Cardinals continue to reshape the roster into the Air Raid Offense in the 2020 NFL draft. The team emphasizes the trenches in this mock draft.

The Arizona Cardinals’ first season with Kliff Kingsbury running the team has almost concluded. Transforming the old Cardinals into the Air Raid offense was never going to happen in one off-season. At the college level, it takes years of recruiting and incremental improvements to change the style of a team.

The NFL gets to speed things up with free agency and the draft. But not many people expected the inaugural season of Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray to produce more than proof of concept for the Air Raid offense in Arizona.

The rookie season of Murray and Kingsbury is at its lowest point so far in the season. Having lost the last two games to the LA Rams and the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team put two of its worst games of the year on tape. In both games, Murray looked uncomfortable in the pocket, hesitant to run and unable to hold on to the ball long enough for receivers to get open. Kyler Murray has been sacked 46 times this year (as of week 14).

According to ESPN, that makes him the most sacked quarterback in the NFL this season. Murray is unlikely to break David Carr’s 2002 record of 76 times in a single season (Pro Football Reference). But for a quarterback who in college escaped pressure by scrambling and played in a system that was defined by quick passes, 2019 is not what fans imagined when the Air Raid disciple Kingsbury was hired.

The Arizona Cardinals are not a complete team and it is going to take another off-season or two to make this franchise into a team that can successfully run what Kingsbury has in mind. The team can make big strides towards that goal in the 2020 NFL draft.

The team has six draft picks in 2020 and going into week 15, the Arizona Cardinals own the sixth pick. The team has a prime opportunity to draft early in the first round, or if it sees fit, trade it’s first-round pick to a quarterback-needy team and reap a bunch of extra draft picks.

General Manager Steve Keim is a seven-year veteran of the NFL draft and has evaluated college talent for the Arizona Cardinals since 1996. Keim has plenty of experience maneuvering in the draft and will be in a prime position to make moves and bring aboard fresh talent for the team. Keim needs this draft to go well.

Keim started his stewardship of the Arizona Cardinals with three seasons of ten or more win seasons. But the last three seasons Keim has overseen a franchise without a winning record. For the seven seasons Keim has been General Manager, the team has only one playoff win to show for it.

The owner (Micheal Bidwell) and the fans will be patient while the team coalesces around Kyler Murray and Kliff Kingsbury this season. But another losing season might see Keim out of the organizations if the team doesn’t make improvements in 2020. This draft may decide the future of the Arizona Cardinals for years to come.

The focus for the Arizona Cardinals in this draft should be protecting Murray at the line of scrimmage and improving the defense all around. This team has a lot of holes, so it will be impossible to address every position the team needs in the 2020 NFL draft.

But with an estimated $74 million in cap space (according to Spotrac), expect Keim to be very active in free agency. In this mock draft, the team will focus on drafting cornerstone athletes, at positions where elite talent doesn’t often become available.

This hypothetical mock has no draft pick trades and goes off the stats and performance of the players heading into week 15. Credit The Draft Network’s NFL Mock Draft Simulator for helping me create this mock draft. This mock is the synthesis of over two dozen emulated mocks, exploring different sets of possibilities and outcomes.