Arizona Cardinals could be sending Rondale Moore down Andy Isabella’s path

Could the Arizona Cardinals have created “Andy Isabella 2.0” with Rondale Moore?

This is the question that the Arizona Cardinals and fans of the team face. Unfortunately, with the uncertainty of what will happen to Rondale Moore’s role after the first six weeks of the season, it’s starting to look like these two former-second round picks could end up with the same fate.

Moore and Isabella are insanely similar, and here’s how:

• Picked in the same round
• Both had much better original jersey numbers but changed them (trivial, but they both did it, thus why it was brought up),
• Both had a big play in a memorable game (Moore’s big catch and run against Minnesota, Isabella’s long touchdown on Halloween Night 2019 vs. San Francisco)
• Both were hardly used down the stretch.

Of course, the statistical difference is that what Isabella achieved in three years, it only took Moore one season to be close to beating that. Cardinals YouTuber,

The Cardinal Rule

originally made this discussion in a video posted in 2021 before the season began.

Rondale Moore is not Andy Isabella, but 2022 could decide otherwise for him and the Arizona Cardinals.

If there’s anything that Isabella has the edge over Moore, it’s his average depth of target (aDOT). This advanced metric shows how deep a wide receiver is when the quarterback targets him.

Isabella had an okay 6.3 aDOT his rookie year in 2019 (it was 11.3 in 2020 and 6.0 in 2021). So what was Moore’s aDOT? A terrible 1.3.

So while Moore replicated Isabella’s career stats in just his rookie season, Moore’s usage and drop-off after his big play in Week 2 show that these two are incredibly similar in production.

Of course, correlation doesn’t mean causation, and one year isn’t a good sample size. One could argue that even Isabella’s stats aren’t a good sample size, either. So there has to be a grain of salt taken with this statement.

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Personally, I’m hoping Moore breaks out and justifies his selection. However, it’s also up to Kliff Kingsbury to get this dynamic weapon and target him deeper down the field. Looking at the aDOT, Moore is much more (pun intended) skilled at making something out of nothing.

That’s efficiency for Moore in that regard, but once DeAndre Hopkins comes back, it could be the end of Moore’s playing time. Moore has six games to prove his worth- let’s see if he can prove it.