Arizona Cardinals Offseason Needs: Skill Players and Pass Defenders
The Arizona Cardinals have to maximize the last year of Kyler Murray’s rookie deal in 2022. They desperately need to fill some potential holes at TE and RB on offense and EDGE and CB on defense.
The 2021 season was a tumultuous one for the Arizona Cardinals. They started extremely well, winning their first seven games, including double-digit road wins over the Titans, Rams, and Browns. But in what has become a trend for Kliff Kingsbury-coached squads, they faded badly down the stretch. Arizona dropped three of their final four regular season games before getting trounced 34-11 in the first round of the playoffs by the eventual Super Bowl Champion Los Angeles Rams.
What began as a promising campaign for the Cardinals ended in a whimper as they flamed out in the playoffs. The tough part is that things aren’t going to get any easier for them this offseason. They pushed their chips to the center of the table this past year, signing and trading for a number of aging veteran players to maximize their championship window.
Kyler Murray will play next year, the 2022-2023 season, on the final year of his rookie contract. This is a team-building hack, as due to the low cap number for Murray, the Cardinals are free to use that cap space on other elite difference makers. Once Murray gets his extension, the Cardinals will no longer have that freedom. Which underscores how important this offseason is for them.
Arizona Cardinals 2022 Offseason Needs
Arizona will have several crucial players potentially hit the free agent market this offseason. Chandler Jones, Christian Kirk, Zach Ertz, James Conner, Robert Alford, Maxx Williams, and Chase Edmonds will all have the opportunity to sign with new teams (barring the Cardinals’ use of the franchise tag).
As of this writing, Arizona is slightly over the salary cap ($813,256) according to OverTheCap.com. They’ll be limited in who they’ll be able to re-sign and target in the free agent market this spring, but there should be some obvious positions that they’ll need to address. Let’s examine some of the Arizona Cardinals positional needs for the 2022 offseason.