The Arizona Cardinals open training camp next week along with pretty much the rest of the NFL, which puts us firmly at the beginning of football season. Where do the Cardinals stand comparatively with the rest of the league as training camps open?
Touchdown Wire’s Mark Schofield published pre-training camp power rankings and the Cardinals find themselves in a reasonable spot.
They come in 13th overall.
Expectations are high in the desert, given what the Arizona Cardinals have built over the past two season, and what they added over the spring. The Cardinals brought in J.J. Watt, adding him to a defense that showed athleticism and versatility last year under Vance Joseph. They drafted another intriguing piece with linebacker Zaven Collins, and pairing him with Isaiah Simmons in the heart of that defense could give opposing offensive coordinators nightmares.
On offense, they brought in veteran receiver A.J. Green to help boost a passing attack that already sports weapons such as Christian Kirk and DeAndre Hopkins. They also drafted the versatile Rondale Moore, who could see time at a few different spots for the cardinals.
So the question facing the Cardinals is this: Does Kyler Murray make the leap that Josh Allen did a season ago? There are reasons to think he can. He is one of the most dangerous quarterbacks down in the red zone, and if he just plays with more consistency, he — and the Cardinals — will live up to the hype.
The Cardinals do play in an incredibly competitive division in the NFC West, where every single team’s realistic best-case scenario is being a Super Bowl team.
Among NFC teams, they rank sixth, which means a projected playoff berth, which is the expectation in 2021 after just missing the postseason last year.
Head coach Kliff Kingsbury has done in two years exactly what has realistically been expected. He took a historically bad offense and made it good. The defense, historically bad in 2019, was respectable in 2020. They should have made the postseason last season, based on where they were midseason, but no one before the season expected them to be better than they ended up being.
The trick is continuing the improvement. There is no question they have a more talented roster now. It is not unreasonable to say they either stayed the same or got better at every position.
If Murray is the star every believes he is, he will be great. And if he is great, the Cardinals will be good.
A wild-card berth should be the low end of expectations.
Based on what we know about the rest of the NFL, ranking 13th overall and sixth in the NFC is reasonable and respectable.
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