Brissett's Contract Solves the Easiest Problem on This Roster
The quarterback question is settled. Jacoby Brissett has his one-year, $15.5 million fully guaranteed deal, the distraction is off the table, and Arizona's front office can point to something — anything — that went according to plan this offseason. Fine. Now look at what's still broken.
The Cardinals finished 2025 at 3-14, outscored by 133 points across 17 games, and the collapse wasn't evenly distributed. They were competitive enough in September, then fell apart so completely that December brought a minus-19.5 point differential per game and a nine-game losing streak that didn't end until the season did. That kind of disintegration doesn't trace back to one position. It traces back to the entire structure surrounding the quarterback, and that structure is, if anything, thinner now than it was when the season ended.
Start with the running game, because the numbers there are genuinely alarming. James Conner, who is 31 and currently listed as questionable, produced at roughly a third of what a league-average starting running back generates — and there is no one behind him who has demonstrated they can carry a meaningful workload. The depth chart behind Conner is populated by players with essentially no production on record. Rookie Jeremiyah Love, the No. 3 overall pick and the most obvious solution to this problem, was ruled out of the Hall of Fame Game earlier this month, which is not a catastrophe in August but is not the kind of news a team with zero viable backup options can absorb casually.
The receiving corps is, if anything, worse. Trey McBride finished 2025 with 1,239 yards and 11 touchdowns — he is a legitimate weapon and the spine of this passing offense. Michael Wilson added over a thousand yards. But below those two, the picture deteriorates fast. The team's top wide receiver by playing time last season produced at a fraction of what a starting wideout should, and Arizona lost additional depth when a former wideout was claimed off waivers by New England earlier this month. Marvin Harrison Jr. showed real promise across 12 games, but he still hasn't fully cleared the injury concerns that shadowed him through 2025. Two functional wide receivers is not a receiving corps — it's a plan that requires nothing to go wrong.
And then there is the context that makes all of this harder to fix. A front-office personnel executive was suspended indefinitely in mid-July for gambling violations and leaking information about Arizona's own draft picks. An offensive lineman faces serious legal jeopardy. The defensive end depth behind Josh Sweat — who is on the physically unable to perform list with a knee injury — is thin, and Walter Nolen III re-injured his calf almost immediately after being activated. The organization has been lurching from crisis to crisis since July, which is precisely the wrong environment for a new offense to take root.
My read is this: Brissett's deal was the right call for continuity, and continuity matters on a team that needs to stop hemorrhaging stability. But the contract announcement has a way of making the quarterback position look like the thing that needed fixing. It wasn't. The Cardinals needed a functional running game, a third wide receiver who can actually play, a cornerback rotation that extends beyond one name, and a front office that isn't managing scandal alongside personnel decisions. None of that is resolved. Larry Fitzgerald just delivered his Hall of Fame speech a few days ago — a reminder of what this franchise can look like when everything is working. Right now, the gap between that legacy and this roster is not a quarterback problem. It's a roster problem, and signing Brissett didn't close it.