The 2025 NFL Draft will take place on Thursday, April 24. The Arizona Cardinals have the 16th pick in the first round. Ahead of the draft, Razing Zona is looking back at the past first-round picks and how they’ve worked out, in an arbitrary but fair way.
Today, we review the picks from 2015 to 2019. Tomorrow, 2020-2024. (Here are the grades for 2010-2014).
Re-grading the Arizona Cardinals first-round draft picks from 2015-2019
2015: D.J. Humphries at No. 24
It feels like every Arizona Cardinals quarterback for the last two decades was held together by rubber bands and a prayer. So, when the team picked offensive tackle D.J. Humphries in 2015, it gave fans hope that the QB would have a new defender keeping the passer from getting smashed into the ground. Except...Humphries was inactive during his rookie year due to a lack of motivation. He finally played a game in 2016 and found his groove as a left tackle. He stayed with the Cardinals until they released him last year. Kansas City was quick to snatch him up.
Ranking: C-. When the NFL calls you one of the “most disappointing rookies,” it’s a bad sign. Humphries was inactive (but healthy) for every game of his rookie season, when then-coach Bruce Arians reportedly called him “Knee Deep” because he had to keep “a knee in his ass every day” to keep him motivated.
Humphries was injury-prone, which isn’t his fault, and he finally played a full season in 2019. The following year, he found his stride under new coach Kliff Kingsbury—and it’s a bummer that it took two coaching changes and five years for him to get there. It was ultimately too little, too late: the Cardinals released him in 2024.
2016: Robert Nkemdiche at No. 29
A five-star high school recruit who joined Ole Miss, Robert Nkemdiche showed potential of being a beast on defense. But getting suspended from the 2016 Sugar Bowl (for a drug possession charge) ended his college career (and dimmed his star with the Draft). He was still available when the Cards’ turn came up, and well…
Ranking: D. Trying to be kind here, but everyone thinks that Nkemdiche is a bust. The Cardinals ended the prior year with an 11-6 record (meaning a lot of unrestricted free agents probably got paid to GTFO of Glendale). So, Nkemdiche joined a strong team, but one that is prone to chaos and disarray (case in point: the Cards wouldn’t see a winning season for five years).
But Nkemdiche didn’t really help with that. He played only five games as a rookie and 12 games the following year, where he only racked up 11 tackles (combined) and one forced fumble. A knee injury ended his 2018 season early, and the Cards declined the fifth-year option on his contract. They waived him in 2019 because he was “not in shape,” which—ouch. After that, he tried to find another team, ultimately playing a few games with the CFL.
2017: Haason Reddick at No. 13
Arizona was already putting the mid in mid-2010s, finishing 2016 with a 7-8-1 record and the No. 13 pick in the Draft. They selected Haason Reddick from Temple. The defensive end’s stock rose right ahead of the Draft after switching to inside linebacker during the Senior Bowl. Arians, who had already set Deonne Bucannon as his “$LB” (“money linebacker”), saw gold. Reddick started three games as a rookie and 12 as a sophomore, where he racked up 80 sacks and a forced fumble. It was the high point of his time with the Cardinals. They declined his fifth-year option.
Ranking: B. Reddick was reliable and showed glimpses of being exceptional during his time in Arizona, which earns him this favorable rating. Raising Zona's Sion Fawkes wrote that letting him go was "foolish," as he was part of the Philadelphia Eagles squad that made it to Super Bowl LVII.
But the decision to decline his fifth year has aged well. The Eagles traded him to the Jets in 2024 with several provisions (that he didn’t meet). And THAT relationship didn’t end well: Reddick demanded the Jets trade him, held a holdout, and missed the first six games of the season. He went on to sign with the Bucs in March 2025.
2018: Josh Rosen at No. 10
Going into the 2018 draft, the Cardinals had a mission: draft a top-tier quarterback, one the team can build its identity around and someone who, perhaps, could take them back to the Super Bowl. Carson Palmer had retired, and they had recruited veterans Sam Bradford and Mike Glennon. To get that missing piece, the Cardinals traded their first-, third-, and fifth-round picks to the Raiders to secure the No. 10 pick, Josh Rosen. The UCLA quarterback was considered a top prospect by practically every NFL pundit, someone who everyone thought would transition seamlessly to the NFL.
Ranking: D+. He didn’t. After Bradford petered out early in the season, coach Steve Wilks named Rosen the starter. Josh finished the season with 2,278 passing yards, 11 touchdowns, and 14 interceptions, going 3-10 as a starter. The team traded him to the Miami Dolphins the following year. He played four games with Atlanta in the 2021 season, joined the Vikings practice squad for a month, and then quietly retired.
Fans and foolhardy writers like me have debated what happened to Josh Rosen. Was his failure due to a porous O-Line and unremarkable receivers? Was it his lack of mobility as the league shifted to a more hypermobile passer template? Was it just bad timing? Rosen came to a Cardinals team that had just lost its head coach, longtime starter, and sense of direction. A lot was riding on him, and the Cardinals tossed him in the deep end to see if he would sink or swim. And he did one of those things, that’s for sure.
2019: Kyler Murray (QB) at No. 1
2019 was a transitional season for the Cardinals. Kliff Kingsbury began his four-year run as Arizona’s head coach. The team was in rebuild mode; the NFL gave the Cardinals four compensatory draft picks because so many free agents bounced. But going 3-13 gave Arizona the No. 1 pick, which they used for Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray. Currently the team’s starting quarterback, Murray has thrown for an average of 3,249 yards over six seasons. 115 total passing touchdowns (31 rushing), with 57 interceptions.
Ranking: C+. Murray has been the most Arizona Cardinals-esque quarterback, someone who can be great but is comfortably “mid.” As Raising Zona’s Chuck Bausman recently pointed out, Murray deserves a recent “mixed results” grading. He hasn’t reached his full potential, but six seasons in, should we expect him to?
Part of it isn’t his fault. In his rookie year, Murray led the league in getting sacked (lending credence to the “Arizona doesn’t know how to build an offensive line” talk). He’s dealt with injuries and didn’t play a full season from 2021 to 2023. And the Cardinals always have something wrong; the team never seems to fire on all cylinders.
But Murray has seemingly earned his reputation for being checked out. He is notorious for how much he plays Call of Duty on Twitch. When the Cardinals signed him to an extension in 2022, they required him to complete 4 hours of “independent study.” They literally had to write doing his homework into his contract.
They’ve had one winning season with him as the starter, which was cruel: it showed what he and this team could possibly do. But the team remembered they were the Arizona Cardinals and resumed sucking. And with Murray and the Cardinals stuck with each other until ’28 (barring any trade magic), it doesn’t seem like the suckage is going to stop.
I hope he proves me wrong.
The kicker is that, looking back at the 2019 Draft, Murray still comes off as the right pick. There’s no real “Tom Brady in the sixth round,” no diamond in the rough. Maybe they would have had equal or greater success with Daniel Jones, but Drew Lock? Gardner Minshew? Arizona chose the best option, and it turned out the most Cardinals way possible.
Tomorrow, we wrap this up with Isaiah Simmons, Zaven Collins, Paris Johnson Jr., Marvin Harrison Jr., and Darius Robinson.