Arizona Cardinals

Spread Option — 11-on-11. The QB is a runner.
Team fit 86.4 A− · Read the full guide →

4-3 Attack — One-gap penetration. Rush four, man behind it.
Team fit 85.4 A−

Not a contender's roster, not a doormat's — the story is in the details below. The face of it is Trey McBride (TE, 99).

Reality check: Arizona moved on from Kyler Murray, who is now 6-0 as Minnesota's starter. The Cardinals are 2-5 behind Jacoby Brissett, own the league's worst scoring defense (29.7 a game), and just gave up 30 to Denver at home. The math on that decision is not getting kinder.

Trey McBride (TE, 99) is the headliner. 99 catching — hands you never worry about; 93 catch in traffic — catches it through contact like the defender is not there; 88 speed — real speed that has to be accounted for. Everything this offense does is built to get him the ball in the situations those numbers describe.

The catch: the quarterback. Jacoby Brissett (74) is one of the lowest-rated starters in the league, and everything fun on this offense is downstream of that problem. After him, the cliff is real — the next-best skill player is Jeremiyah Love (82). Take the headliner away and this is a different, much quieter offense.

Budda Baker (SS, 88) sets the terms. 90 speed — real speed that has to be accounted for; 89 hit power — arrives with bad intentions — ball carriers remember him. The tragedy is arithmetic: one of him, ten other spots, and the ten win.

Zoom out and it gets grim: a bottom-four defense by the ratings. Quarterbacks circle this one in pen.

Chad Ryland (75) kicks — 94 leg, 83 accuracy. Blake Gillikin (74) punts — 96 leg, 82 accuracy. The return game has a genuine weapon: Devin Duvernay (86 return, 93 speed). As a unit the kicking game rates bottom-three in the league, which turns fourth-and-manageable into fourth-and-pray.

Offense: an honest bench. No buried star, no trait that betrays the overall. What you see is what is there.

Defense: Starling Thomas V (CB, 73 OVR). Read the ratings page twice: the overall says 73, the speed says 93. Overall is about the whole job; that speed is about one job, and he can already do that one as well as most starters.