The Arizona Cardinals is a franchise that has provided spurts of excitement but has never won the last game of the season. To some, that’s the only game that matters.
The team came close in February 2009 before James Harrison, Ben Roethlisberger and Santonio Holmes ended the Cardinals’ hopes of securing their first Lombardi trophy.
Since then, it’s been a long stretch of frustration for the franchise with only four playoff appearances in 14 years.
Some say it’s karma.
In 1992, Arizona became the last state to officially recognize Martin Luther King Day as a Federal holiday, even though it was signed into federal law in 1983. A year prior to the state unanimously voting it into law, that defiance cost the team the 1993 Super Bowl bid and the Cardinals have had only six postseason appearances since 1983.
Then in 2018, the team humiliatingly fired head coach Steve Wilks after only one season.
Management had decimated the defense, drafted Josh Rosen and gave Wilks no real talent to work with. As a result, the team went 3-13 that season.
In his place stepped Kliff Kingsbury, who fit the prototype of what NFL owners thirsted for in a head coach.
Kingsbury immediately got help in the form of Heisman Trophy winner, Kyler Murray and then traded for DeAndre Hopkins a year later. By his third season, the team was 11-6, a dramatic improvement over his first two years.
Yet Kingsbury’s four-year tenure was a failure. He produced only one winning season (28-37-1) and was fired less than a week ago. In response, he ran off to Thailand.
The team, who also parted ways with GM Steve Keim, currently has a new GM in Monty Ossenfort but no head coach.
Now the Cardinals have the opportunity to right their wrongs, bring leadership back to the franchise and restore good karma.
All it takes is hiring Brian Flores as their head coach.
Flores is a proven and qualified head coach. He cemented that after cleaning up Adam Gase’s mess in his first season with the Dolphins and then led them to back-to-back winning seasons before he was shockingly fired in January 2022.
Flores stabilized Miami’s locker room and won games despite not having the talent-loaded roster that first-year head coach Mike McDaniel had this past season.
And that was a team Flores deserved to coach.
Instead, Flores used his talents to help hone the Steelers’ defense into one of the league’s best down the stretch.
Flores is a head coach who deserves another shot regardless of the racial discrimination lawsuit he filed against the league last February.
And that shot lies with Arizona, a franchise he has ties with.
Before the Dolphins hired him, Flores reportedly blew Arizona away in his head coaching interview. In addition, he worked with Ossenfort while they both were in New England, so they have familiarity.
Arizona needs a qualified head coach to generate wins. They don’t need one with a scenic draft day backdrop that camouflages coaching shortcomings.
Flores is the former.
Many say that he’s a defensive coach, which is true. In his first season with the Dolphins, Miami went 5-11 and surrendered 494 points. But those numbers went to 10-6 and 338 in 2020 and 9-8 and 373 in 2021. Even more surprisingly, in 2020 the Dolphins scored 404 points; that’s 7 more points than McDaniel’s team scored this past season (397) with Tua Tagovailoa, Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle.
And Flores accomplished that in one less game and with an offense led by Ryan Fitzpatrick, Myles Gaskin and DeVante Parker.
Brian Flores can revamp the defense to craft it into a formidable unit. Then he can finally have the opportunity to work with real offensive superstars like Murray and Hopkins.
So Arizona, you control your destiny now.
Hire Brian Flores as your head coach and secure both the present and future of your franchise. Or go the route you went in 2018.
Just remember how that worked out for you.
