Love Sits Out the Hall of Fame Game, and Arizona's Backfield Question Stays Unanswered

Jeremiyah Love, the No. 3 overall pick, will not play Thursday against the Panthers. The team confirmed it this week, and while protecting a top rookie in a preseason opener is standard enough practice, the timing still stings a little for a franchise that badly needs to see what it has back there.

The context is the problem. James Conner is 31 and was a shadow of a functional starter last season — the depth chart behind him has no one with meaningful regular-season production to their name. Trey Benson is active and has seen some work, but he hasn't shown enough to close that gap on his own. Love was supposed to be the answer the organization paid dearly for, and right now he's watching from the sideline in week one of preseason.

No reason has been given for the decision, and sitting a rookie in the Hall of Fame Game is not itself alarming. But this offseason has not been a series of isolated, benign events for Arizona — it's been one thing after another, and each new wrinkle lands differently against that backdrop. My read is that Love's absence Thursday tells us very little on its own. What it does is extend the wait on the one position where the Cardinals can least afford to keep waiting.