Let me preface by saying I have no expectation that the 2020 NFL season will play out and the Arizona Cardinals have already refunded season ticket purchases. But I’ll give you a preview as if it were because, in either scenario, the Arizona Cardinals win no championships and people still say Mike Bidwill is a rapist like his good friend and classmate, Brett Kavanaugh. 

For those of you who have already forgotten, the 2019 Arizona Cardinals went 5-10-1 under rookie head coach Kliff Kingsbury who brought his Air Raid spread offense to the NFL with the field management skills of Rookie of the Year Kyler Murray. The team nailed 2019 expectations of not winning anything but being interesting to watch. They missed the playoffs for the fourth straight year, being eliminated by RAMMIT in just Week 13.

The Arizona Cardinals are the perfect team for a 2020 where, frankly, nothing even matters. Like every never-followed-up-on news story, the Cardinals busy off season makes for a simple and easy What a Difference a Year Makes, Huh? season preview headline where any lazy writer can churn out a “This could be the NFL’s worst-to-first squad this year!” article with the oversimplified analysis of: [(Last year’s growth) + (Key Additions^^{Free Agency}) + (Key Additions^^Draft)] • [(Momentum Shift) + (Locker Room Culture) + (Mentality)] = Growth.

It’s a known quantity around [DFO] here that I do not respect sport media. So I’m not going to waste your time with a deep dive but, to illustrate my point, I’d like to share just the beginning and end of the 2020 Athalon Sports Cardinals preview.

and….
Arizona is going to repeat in the division cellar and you’re broadcasting a headline that this team will “surprise”? These dicks. I swear….

Anyways! On the topic of the WuFlu, as I mentioned last year, the Arizona Cardinals are a long con business. The same way Mexico will pay for the wall and we will bring manufacturing jobs back from China just as soon as we get full intellectual property protections for US companies who outsource their production capacity to the Red Dragon. The same way this QAnon global human trafficking ring with be broken up and these thousands of victims saved just so as soon as we can indict Joe Biden for the crimes against children (namely rape) that Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh committed. And since basically any Venn diagram of white trash shows [(Cardinals Fans ∪ #WWG1WGA) = (Cardinals Fans ∩ #WWG1WGA)], it’s a pretty safe bet that Mike Bidwill will be milking Arizona suckers for millions in the near future on the simple statement that, “2020 was The Year for Kingsbury and Murray to make the leap but interrupting that development has hurt the team and now fans need to be ready to wait a little longer for that elusive Super Bowl Championship that no Bidwill has ever delivered.”

Seriously, that’s it. We’ve discussed ad nauseum how the NFL sells hope. It’s why the schedule works the way it does. Why the draft works as it does. Why waivers work as they do. The lost 2020 is nothing more than another marketing opportunity. A chance for the Cardinals fanbase to insist that they were jobbed by losing the sophomore year growth of Murray and Kingsbury. Sure, everyone else lost the year but the Cardinals are in the unique position to be a shitty franchise that hasn’t had a winning season — just a winning season — since 2015 (two head coaches and four starting quarterbacks ago) but is selling, “we got Pat Mahomes 2 so, as soon as you’ve finished your hydroxychloroquine regiment, come on over and we’ll show you.”

Speaking of Arizona fans being stupid fucking rubes who’ll believe anything, here’s a completely unrelated headline: Study: Cardinals fans least likely to avoid attending NFL games due to COVID-19.

But back to fantasy [non-football] world….

The offseason good? Trading for DeAndre Hopkins to unload David Johnson. The Air Raid offense has shown to be plenty of both ground and scheme dependent. David Johnson, who I believe never got back his je ne sais quoi since going to the IR in 2017, hasn’t had a place on this roster — especially with his contract (see: Steve Keim) — since Bruce Arians was forced out. Johnson will be an interesting play in Houston and, in a normal year, I’d expect a couple monster games from DJ as Tim Kelly learns to scheme with him.

Also good, adding youth to shore up the defense — their weakest part of the game by far — was a positive but not in any way that will be noticed in 2020. The front is still the Chandler Jones show and the tweaker thin secondary is repeating, for I’m pretty sure the fourth straight year, Patrick Peterson plus another guy needs to step up to his 2014/2016/2017 numbers from Atlanta/College/LA. Because this is the season to be lacking depth.

The bad? Honestly not all that much. This team has missed the playoffs for four straight years. There wasn’t a lot of good to be salvaged. The defensive line is still weak; there’s no depth on the offensive line; the team doesn’t have a backup QB; the team is counting on second and third year wide outs to “make the jump” because the current stable is Deandre Hopkins and Larry Fitzgerald, who seems more likely to die of COVID-19 than retire this decade (Christian Kirk has not made the leap). But, again, none of this matters. The Cardinals don’t have the kind of front office who can assemble a complete roster — and that isn’t changing anytime soon. If they need to cut weight after an unremarkable 2020, look to see defensive coordinator Vance Joseph take the blame for an organization that is under it’s second generation of incompetent family leadership.

Assuming a normal year, this is a six win schedule with victories drying up by mid-November. Getting Miami at home after the bye, any OC should be fired if they don’t put up 69 points that game. But the Cardinals still play in the NFC West; still are lacking in depth; and still have no leadership in the front office. You’ll watch any football that makes it to broadcast this season but, honestly, the 2020 Arizona Cardinals will be about as missed as Bill Bidwill (1931-2019).