The Arizona Cardinals already turned Marvin Harrison Jr. into a second-round pick by trading him to the Houston Texans. They could continue stockpiling future assets by flipping veterans such as Josh Sweat ahead of the Nov. 10 trade deadline.
Cardinals general manager Monti Ossenfort should take a page out of the Indianapolis Colts' book and embrace the fire sale. It's unlikely he'll go to those extremes, however, as the Cardinals have remained a team in purgatory throughout his tenure.
Cardinals are stuck in a rebuilding cycle under GM Monti Ossenfort
Even when the Cardinals do bottom out, the picks haven't panned out. They've already moved on from former top five picks Kyler Murray and Harrison.
Harrison went for a second-round pick, which shows Ossenfort admits his draft mistake with this trade. That's a franchise-altering mistake to admit just three years into a young receiver's career at age 24.
And perhaps even worse, the fact that Murray is now contributing to what remains an undefeated Minnesota Vikings team suggests there's a much bigger problem with the Cardinals' infrastructure as a whole.
It's a combination of Ossenfort missing on these picks, and the picks looking even worse than they actually are because they aren't put in an ideal position to succeed entering the league.
There have been exceptions, such as offensive tackle Paris Johnson Jr., the No. 6 pick coming out of Ohio State in 2023. The jury is still out on first-round picks Walter Nolen and Jeremiyah Love as well. But then again, why are the Cardinals spending a top five pick on a running back when there are clearly more significant, unaddressed positions of need?
The reality is, nothing will change about Arizona's contender ceiling until they have a legitimate franchise quarterback. That brings up yet another decision by Ossenfort that predictably backfired -- the decision to rework Jacoby Brissett's deal. At least they didn't add additional years to the contract, but they paid him roughly $10 million more after leading the Cardinals to a 3-14 season, and it aged just about as horribly as you'd expect.
Even if Ossenfort makes the right decision to embrace the rebuild by trading these veterans to contenders for future draft capital, we've already seen how that plays out for Arizona. His track record of draft picks not panning out, and the bigger-picture problem of Arizona not being able to support those incoming picks adequately, suggest this is a larger organizational problem.
The Cardinals will likely get stuck in this rebuilding cycle, only to trade away their picks years later. They need to move on from Ossenfort to break that frustrating cycle once and for all.
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