The Arizona Cardinals continue to make the news for all the wrong reasons.
This was an article that I was never hoping to write, but there is something seriously wrong with the culture of the Arizona Cardinals (and spare me the clips of the Commanders guy saying, “The culture is actually Damn good.”)
In the span of roughly 48 hours, the Arizona Cardinals had Marquise Brown arrested for criminal speeding of 126 MPH. So naturally, there was a lot of debate on Twitter about how the team and everyone should just move on.
Then, today the Twitter verse and NFL world learned of the Cardinals running backs coach James Saxon being charged with two counts of domestic violence emerging from an incident in May.
Like it or not, these are not things that we can forget. Can people learn from them? Yes, no one is perfect. However, for a franchise that is so desperately trying to do things right and win its first championship in 75 years, these are what disrupt all the good momentum going forward.
Michael Floyd, arrested for DUI, released
— Chuck Harris (@chuckh3) August 4, 2022
Steve Keim and Ron Minegar, arrested for DUI, fined and suspended
Darius Philon, charged with assault, released
James Saxon, charged with battery, still coaching the team
Cardinals have a double standard when comes to players vs staff https://t.co/PhNb54e6eP
The Arizona Cardinals have way more problems than we knew, and they’re coming out of the woodwork.
Chuck Harris’ Tweet above shows everything that’s gone wrong here. Now for those that are going to say, “The Cardinals have had worse offseasons!” or “That’s not that much!” that’s where that has to stop. You can’t forget Ricky Seals-Jones beating up a hotel worker just because he couldn’t use their bathroom.
These have all been high-profile events and negative ones for the Cardinals. The best ability when you’re on a football team is availability. When these decisions are made, they hurt the team. It may not be measurable, but what is going to happen to Saxon? 4
AZ Cardinals off-season
— Kyler Burd (@AZCard_BurdsEye) August 4, 2022
- Murray scrubs IG 📉
- DHop suspension 📉
- Jeff Gladney accident 📉
- Hudson mulling retirement 📉
- Hudson returns! 📈
- Murray gets paid 📈
- Hump gets paid 📈
- Brown arrested 📉
- Saxon charged 📉
Harris makes a great point that players are zapped as soon as this stuff happens, but when it’s staff or coaches, it’s treated as a prolonged timeout or a slap on the wrist. What makes this also an act of cosmic irony is that this happens just mere hours after Kliff Kingsbury told Marquise Brown to “Be Better.”
Maybe Kingsbury should’ve addressed that to the whole team instead. What a nightmare offseason.