The Cardinals finished 4-13 last season. While the showing in Jonathan Gannon‘s first season locked down the No. 4 spot in the draft, Arizona obviously has a long way to go in GM Monti Ossenfort‘s rebuild. But some more attention is coming the organization’s way ahead of this regime’s second season.
Particularly, many around the league are studying the work of the Cardinals’ offensive coordinator. The scheme Drew Petzing has implemented is drawing praise, and The Athletic’s Jeff Howe indicates a widespread belief exists the second-year coordinator will be summoned for HC interviews in 2025 (subscription required). With Gannon a defense-oriented coach, Petzing is going into his second season as an NFL play-caller.
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This would be a rare development for the Cardinals, who have not seen an OC land a top job since the Kurt Warner–Larry Fitzgerald combination powered Todd Haley to the Chiefs’ gig in 2009. (Before that, it had been since Rod Dowhower‘s 1985 Colts arrival.) The Cardinals will probably need to show significant improvement for Petzing to have a true opportunity to become a finalist for a position, but Ejiro Evero‘s recent rise — after being tied to 5-12 and 2-15 teams — does remind that clubs have been more willing to look for promising assistants on non-playoff teams.
Coming from a role as the Browns’ quarterbacks coach, Petzing helped Jacoby Brissett to a bounce-back season — during Deshaun Watson‘s 11-game suspension — and coached under or alongside Kevin Stefanski for nine years. Working with the Vikings’ wide receivers for most of the Adam Thielen–Stefon Diggs pairing’s duration, Petzing followed Stefanski to Cleveland and spent two years as the Browns’ tight ends coach. Stefanski moved him to QBs coach in 2022. While Petzing could not coax Watson to anything especially close to his Texans-level form, that appears to a bigger-picture issue involving the quarterback.
Petzing, 37, only coached Kyler Murray for eight games last season, doing so after late-summer acquisition Josh Dobbs and 2023 fifth-round pick Clayton Tune combined for nine starts as the Pro Bowler finished ACL rehab. Petzing’s offense ranked 24th in scoring and 19th in yards, with DVOA placing the unit 21st. Considering the Cards only had their starting QB for eight games, that is not exactly a discouraging finish.
After helping Trey McBride to an Arizona-years franchise tight end record, with 825 receiving yards, Petzing will have No. 4 overall pick Marvin Harrison Jr. at his disposal this season. A Cardinals ascent would appear to specifically boost their OC’s stock, as the NFL perpetually searches for up-and-coming offensive minds. Harrison elevating this unit, with Murray now nearly two years removed from his knee injury, could help determine if Petzing will be the rare Cardinals OC to jump onto the coaching carousel.
Josh Dobbs looked better than expected, especially playing for that “team”. There may be something to this guy. I admire Kevin Stefanski.
Petzing has made some intriguing calls/schemes in a short amount for a rebuilding team. In a way he’s like Bobby Slowik in Houston in that they’ve had young offenses without a prior foundation of overall team success that they inherited. Unlike Slowik, however, Petzing’s team wasn’t good last year. To be honest, I’m rather unimpressed by Gannon as a coach, and similarly unimpressed by Murray, but I would still be hesitant to endorse Petzing as s head coach if I were making that call. He’s been quite creative and is working in a tough and unsettled situation with a few revolving pieces, but you’d have to see some results and concrete proof of success before making that commitment. Right now, it’s all positive, but it’s still potential.
Teams have pivoted hard to the side of unproven youth as coaches, and are so fearful of missing out on the next young up and comer that they’ll hire based on potential alone, but you have to give your new regime several years to build a foundation on most teams before they even start to be complete. Committing to that long with an unproven coach who will after this year only have a possible maximum of one statistically great year just invites too much risk for me. Like I said, coaches jump at the first opportunity that comes their way-which is in many ways understandable-and teams are more willing than ever to hand those opportunities out to young, inexperienced coaches. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes not.
You have to think that more experience would only help the coaches work out problems or counters to their schemes (so that they are effective for more than two years and with multiple players) and so that they get wiser with handling players. There’s always the risk that they’ll lose the opportunity, so it’s understandable why they’d jump for their dream job. But I’m less comfortable if I’m in that position paying purely for potential with almost no history of sustained and consistent productive results. As far as Petzing goes, though…he’s is headed in a good direction now, but two years as an O.C. with at least one bad year numbers-wise isn’t enough to feel at ease about a long term hire.
Gannon has actually been impressive to me. Not the type of coach I’d thought he’d be. Very much a players coach. What the article fails to mention is the Cards offense was a top 10 offense with Kyler at the helm over the last 8 games. I think people have this distaste for Kyler that won’t go away. No matter what he does. He actually was impressive last year (especially that eagles game) and has impressed this offseason
Yep. He had them playing hard last year. They just didn’t have any talent.
I think most of the coordinators and assistant coaches in the NFL know how the promotion game works. Merit and achievement play a small part but the trump card is having those important connections to members of the “old boys club”.