After the release of the Arizona Cardinals 2025 schedule, it's clear that the NFL has set the team up to fail once again. The Cardinals have a relatively easy set of poopnents, but the schedule is about as lopsided as possible.
In a recent article, The Athletic posted projected win totals, playoff odds, and Super Bowl odds for each NFL team. Arizona was in a familiar spot.
Arizona Cardinals projected to miss out on playoffs once again
Hope is hard to come by in the desert. The Arizona Cardinals have been one of the worst teams in the NFL in recent years, with their last playoff appearance coming in 2021 and their last playoff win coming nearly a decade ago.
But after the masterful offseason that general manager Monti Ossenfort and his staff have put together in 2025, fans have started to feel optimistic about what this season could look like. A playoff appearance has become the expectation.
National media is still catching up, apparently. The Athletic, using their projection model, had the Arizona Cardinals winning 8.8 games in 2025. That puts them at 16th in the NFL, and 8th in the NFC. Just outside of the playoffs. The model "forecasts the quality of each team and then simulates each game of the regular season and playoffs until a Super Bowl champion emerges."
The Athletic gave Arizona a 43.6% chance to make the playoffs, and a 3.2% chance to make the Super Bowl.
While admittedly frustrating, these projections can serve as a reminder of where the Cardinals truly are in their journey to contention. They are a playoff-hopefull team who has yet to prove that they belong among the true powerhouses of the league. It hurts to accept, but it's true. For now.
The set of franchises around Arizona in The Athletic's projections gives some insight into how the Cardinals are viewed. The Cardinals ranked just above the Seahawks, Dolphins, Vikings, and Cowboys. They were just below teams like the Chargers and Texans. This is a class of teams stuck somewhere between contenders and bottom-dwellers.
If the Arizona Cardinals want to escape from football purgatory, they have to put it all together and win football games. In the third year of the current regime, a playoff appearance feels almost necessary. If the Cardinals can battle through a brutal stretch of games to end the year and earn a spot in the postseason, then they may finally get some recognition as a true threat in the NFC.