Cardinals Search for Head Coach Continues

Have you ever found yourself driving and slamming the hood in fury while cursing the car in front of you that is going 25 in a 40? I have, many times. Curses spoken that I would never repeat. And then you pull ahead and see that it is an old granny driving the car. Sold all her stocks in panic during the pando back in spring 2020 and bought herself a nice Benz to die in. 3,000 miles racked up, maybe, destined to be sold by her daughter along with all the other belongings when the old queen goes out to pasture. “She was born on Pearl Harbor,” the daughter says as she hands the keys over. “Oh, hey, did you see that Chinese balloon? My brother in Missouri said he saw it twice.”

In my drinking days I used to see balloons more often. Back in those times I also got up early on Saturday to go to the grocery store to get my usual weekend items. Firefly tea whisky (damn good stuff), coffee, and a bag of chocolate doughnuts. All the old folks would be in there at the time. You’d think I’d go to the express checkout but oh no the trick is just any line without an old person. Never choose the line with the old person. If you think they might have been born before World War Two, stay away. If you think they might have had a sibling who had polio, stay away. Especially stay away if you’re a current piece of shit like I was then. My lord, the pain and shame of standing in the checkout line behind an old lady paying by check. The juxtaposition of your booze right next to the potatoes and vegetables that took the old maid damn near an hour to collect. The itch for a drink only increasing. Bad times. Thank god my wife found me when she did.

Waiting for the Cardinals to hire a new head coach has been the same as waiting behind an old person. The search has gone on so long that Burger King has come out with two new jingles and released the abominable Mexican Chicken Sandwich. Unfortunately for us Card’s fans, we can’t have it our way.

I wasn’t sure of any the head coach candidates but for Sean Payton and we struck out on that. Payton was the lone proven coach who I trusted could elevate our short king Kyler Murray to the next level. Payton was always a long shot though. The Cardinals flirted with him and I’m sure Bidwill tried to get him, but the price of acquiring him, combined with the history and aura around the Cardinals franchise surely put an end to that dream.

The Denver Broncos of course were the team to win Payton. Reports are saying Payton believes the Broncos to be one of the ‘crown jewel’ franchises of the NFL. The new owners (the Walton-Penner family, heirs to Walmart) of the Broncos ponying up for a big salary surely helped. Perhaps that dastardly fuck John Elway had something to do with it too. Whatever the truth is, the Cards don’t have him. It’s a gut punch on the football side of things. Payton chose to coach Russell Wilson over Kyler Murray. Both QBs had a rough 2022, but damn, Wilson is 34 and Kyler is 25. Kyler earned two pro bowl nods by age 25 playing under the wack Kingsbury-Keim regime. Kyler is a better athlete and with the right guidance has a ceiling much higher than a washed-up Wilson. What the fuck? The Cardinals really are just one of the lowly Houses of the NFL. The Broncos, battered and bruised as they are, are still a more enticing destination than the Cardinals for Payton. Maybe it was just the Cards couldn’t provide the same kind of deal to the Saints to get them to trade Payton to the Cards. I think it was a combination of both though. It sucks. Here the Cards are, recently broken up with their crazy hot ex who’s off in Thailand getting blown and looking for a new mate. The Cards did their best to catch the baddest biddy around, but alas, it was never meant to be. The Cards are the accountant working in the long time family shoe repair business that their miserable father established while the Broncos are currently some sort of weird love child between Hunter Biden and Walmart, full of secrets, money, status, and just enough sex appeal.

So where do the Cards look next? Who should they look to? Someone interested in bringing out the best of Kyler Murray. The Cardinals need to hire an offensive coach to bring out the best of Kyler and his huge contract. Someone committed to building an offensive line and run game to support him. This is the path new General Manager Monti Ossenfort should be focused on. At first glance Monti is another bald white football guy who would fit right in at Thanksgiving dinner alongside Steve Keim and Sean Kugler but I’ll give the benefit of doubt to Monti. His name is Monti. I like that shit. On the spectrum of bald white dudes I think Monti lies somewhere between Jason Statham and an energy drink company founder. That’s a pretty good spot. Keim was on the other side somewhere between a creepy high school coach and Kingpin, that giant mob boss from the Marvel comics. It’s hard to say anything about Monti yet. What he does in the next couple months regarding the coach, free agency, and the draft will give us more of an insight to him. For now, let’s be happy that the Cards greatly improved their position on the spectrum of bald dudes. We will see how well he flips the roster.

One of the undervalued things Keim did in his tenure was flip the roster. Modern NFL teams can be rebuilt quickly with the right ingredients. This is not the NBA or MLB. Keim did this in 2013, bringing in Arians and Palmer which led to a three year run of great teams. Then later in 2019 he ditched Wilks and Rosen after one year for Kliff and Kyler. Keim never could sustain the team after the flip though, never building a complete roster from the draft, but rather making a lot of splashy trades (Chandler Jones, Carson Palmer, Deandre Hopkins, Hollywood Brown) and short term veteran signings (JJ Watt, Dwight Freeny, Karlos Dansby, AJ Green) to help propel the Cards in short period spurts. In hindsight, this fits Keim. Get the $1,000 bottle service at the club and worry about the car and the wife and kids later. Let’s fucking go. Rooting for the Cardinals these past ten years under Keim was like my old days drinking. Get absolutely lit for a night or two and then suffer the pain and aftermath the next five days till proceeding to repeat the cycle. This is how I met Denny Greeens, at the end of a forty-eight-hour bender sitting at a Denny’s in Mesa at eight in the morning ordering a shitty burger and fries. This is also how we met Perry and Gracey. It's a decent way to meet friends but a terrible way to run an NFL team.

Monti can change this but he needs to draft well. That’s obvious. Keim’s biggest downfall was not getting enough blue chip players in the top rounds of the draft. Picking at three this year in the draft is easy. Grab Alabama outside linebacker Will Anderson if he’s there. Beef up the defensive front and offensive line. The Cardinals need to draft and develop players. Now if Monti can do all this, can Kyler take the Cards to the promise land? Can I no longer be ashamed of being a Cards fan?

Oh, Kyler, my dearest short king. Rumors out of the Senior Bowl in Mobile Alabama are that Kyler is holding back some coaches from taking the job. Screw them, those fucks. Kyler is a good quarterback. I think if he has the right team around him he can take the Cardinals far. The issue is the money we’re paying him now. Luckily the salary cap is going up so that should help, but still, a lot of money is heading Kyler’s way. Can a championship caliber roster be built around Kyler’s contract and talents? I think so, but I must admit, I wanted a new quarterback for a moment. I wanted the Cardinals to absolutely suck next year, get the number one pick for the 2024 draft, and draft USC Heisman quarterback Caleb Williams, the Gen-Z uber-star who wears ridiculous outfits and colors his finger nails before games. Comparisons are odious but his game reminds me of Brett Favre and Patrick Mahomes. I would love to have that guy. But the Cards aren’t getting him. The Cards would have to be the worst team in the league next year to get the number one pick and draft him. Kyler is too good to let the Cards sink that low. Remember that crazy Raiders game the Cards won in OT in week two? Kyler is capable of winning a few games like that to not let the Cards sink so low. So let’s get it out of our minds. It’s not happening.

It’s a great fantasy, I know. I had dreams of the Cards going full Houston Texans. Hiring a scapegoat coach to help tank for the pick. Jeff Saturday, Herm Edwards, Joe Judge, Matt Rhule. Coach Klein from the South-Central Louisiana State University Mud Dogs. The list of beautiful scapegoats could go on forever. It never works out for the teams that do this though. The Texans couldn’t secure the first overall pick with rookie Davis Mills in 2021. Then in 2022 they doubled down and tried again with the double-cheeked legend himself, Jeff Driskel, but not even the giant ass of Driskel could get clench the first pick. In 2019 the Dolphins clearly tanked for Tua Tagovailoa. Owner Stephen Ross was even accused of paying his coach to tank games. Didn’t happen though, they picked at five, not one. They got Tua in the end, but they missed on Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert, two far superior quarterbacks. Lesson is, folks, if you’re wishing your team acted like the Houston Texans or the Miami Dolphins, you need to check yourself.

We here at headquarters will plan to have more coverage on the Cards once the new coach is hired. We haven’t made a post in a while, we know, and we apologize to the readers. I hope you have gathered by now that we are very flawed people. Our intern was almost killed in Mexico during the holidays and we have faced a lot of issues from his family and the cartel. It’s been a mess. Thankfully our intern is alive and back in the states. Turns out his Spanish was awful. He lied on his resume. I guess he heard on the radio that fifteen hours of Babel was the equivalent of a semester of Spanish in college. He thought he could wing it with Babel. But no, he couldn’t. The little shit understands Gorilla better than Spanish. Thanks to Denny Greens for helping him out while I was dealing with family issues (my fake sister tried to blackmail me). Denny lost a lot of money in saving this intern. And thank you to Matthew Perry as well. For as much a piece of shit as Perry is, he’s still an international legend and pulled a hell of a lot of strings to get us out of this intern mess. Denny Greens has also had a lot of women problems lately so excuse his absence. Denny Greens has a good heart but Denny Greens loves bad bitches.

As for myself, well, I must admit, I’ve had an existential crisis. This past season was so bad that I had to take some time away and really think about my fandom. It’s shameful to say but I opened myself to other teams to root for. I entered the transfer portal. The Cardinals have hurt me so much. For a couple weeks I was trying to see if there was another team I could root for. Shameful, I know. All I could come up with was the Raiders, my first love. I was on the edge of doing it, but it’s just too hard. Josh McDaniels and Mark Davis are gross. You can’t go back to what you had. The past is always there but the past is untouchable. My wife then tried to get me to join the Broncos which led to a huge fight. I’m too old, folks. My heart is attached to the stupid Cardinals and my head can’t change my heart. I am still in love with Larry Fitzgerald, forever and for always. Go Cards.