Arizona Cardinals Extend Coach Arians, GM Keim

The tandem have lead the Arizona Cardinals to two straight winning seasons after three down years

Steve Keim has made all the right moves, well mostly right moves off the field.  On the field head coach Bruce Arians deserves a “A” for his efforts in turning around a team that was going nowhere fast two years ago.  On Monday they were awarded with contract extensions.

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Keim was credited with doing a great job finding talent in a “next-man up campaign” where it seemed like on a daily basis the Cardinals would lose a major piece to their Super Bowl aspirations puzzle.  Keim has been in the Cardinals front office for 16 years, the last two as the team’s general manager.

Keim was the one who wanted to draft running back Adrian Peterson instead of offensive tackle Levi Brown in 2007 but then general manager Rod Graves put the lid on that talk and drafted Brown.  Not every move has paid off for Keim but not everyone is perfect.  Some fault Keim for getting Ryan Lindley back.  In hindsight, although he played horribly at the end of the season, they needed the body after injuries.  Not many other options to go with.  He was the profootballtalk.com Executive of the Year the past two seasons.

As for Arians, well, we all know what we have in Arians.  He has his detractors sure but they are few and far between.  His detractors don’t like his wanting to go down the field all the time style and for his use of running back Andre Ellington.

As far as I’m concerned, Arians was the right choice back in January 2013.  He was coming off Coach of the Year as an interim coach for the Indianapolis Colts.  He received votes for the same award in 2013 and of course won the award in 2014.  He’s lead the Cardinals to 10-6 and 11-5 seasons with a wild-card berth that likely would have been a NFC West title if not for all the injuries the Cardinals incurred in 2014.

So, they both get well deserved extensions.  Both were signed though the 2018 season.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same thing happen with their contracts then as well.  Arians has called his head coaching position in Arizona the last job he’ll ever have.

With all of their injured players progressing well and appear to be returning in time for training camp in several months, things are looking up for the Cardinals.  It all starts in the front office with Keim and on the sidelines with Arians.  I shudder to think where this franchise would be right now without either one of them.