Marvin Harrison Jr. will be inactive for Sunday’s home game against the San Francisco 49ers after he underwent surgery for appendicitis. This will be the third injury or illness at receiver this week for the Cardinals.
Arizona already lost Zay Jones (Achilles) and Simi Fehoko (arm) in their Week 10 loss on the road against the Seattle Seahawks, placing them both on injured reserve. Losing Harrison will hurt the team on a whole other level.
Michael Wilson will take reps as the team’s No. 1 wide receiver this week. The third-year player out of Stanford has 22 catches for 231 yards and a touchdown in the playing time he’s seen this season. This all came when he was listed as the No. 2 receiver: now he’ll be seeing a lot more targets. Xavier Weaver will be bumped up the depth chart and will fill in for Wilson at the No. 2 position.
In a corresponding move, the Cardinals promoted practice squad wide receiver Andre Baccellia to the 53-man roster. Baccellia, 28, has not played in a regular-season game since the 2023 season. Making his debut in 2022, he has caught seven of his ten targets for 45 yards and is still eyeing his first career touchdown.
Head coach Jonathan Gannon and offensive coordinator Drew Petzing will be relying on their future All-Pro tight end, Trey McBride. The 25-year-old is coming off his best game of the season, in which he hauled in nine catches for 127 yards and a touchdown.
Losing Harrison hurts badly, as the receiving corps has been thinning more with each passing week, but this will prove to be an opportunity for younger players in the lineup to step up and make plays. This will be a prime opportunity to see what Gannon has in Xavier Weaver and how the running game with Emari Demercado and Bam Knight would pan out. Week 11 will be an interesting one, to say the least.