The Cardinals Have No One Left to Protect Jacoby Brissett, and That's Not a Metaphor
Five days. That's how long it took for Arizona's offensive line rebuild to lose both of its cornerstones before a single regular-season snap. Chase Bisontis, the second-round pick expected to push for immediate starting time, is on injured reserve with a torn MCL — his career, for now, paused after two NFL games. Isaiah Adams, the incumbent starter he was supposed to challenge, remains in legal jeopardy stemming from a guns and gangs investigation in Canada, his availability for 2026 genuinely uncertain. Two players the Cardinals drafted specifically to solve this problem. Gone, in the span of a week, through two completely different kinds of catastrophe. I wrote on Saturday about how Bisontis made a broken line worse. What I didn't fully reckon with then is what these two losses mean together: Arizona now has no credible plan to keep Jacoby Brissett upright.
This is the declaration: the Cardinals' offensive line, as currently constructed, cannot protect a starting quarterback in 2026. Not adequately. Not enough to matter. The depth chart tells you everything — Elijah Wilkinson as the only lineman with meaningful production last season, Adams' status unresolved, and behind them a collection of players who have contributed essentially nothing at this level. That is not a line. That is a liability dressed in pads.
History is instructive here, and it is not kind. The 2017 Cleveland Browns lost their starting quarterback to injury in week one and never recovered behind a porous line, finishing 0-16. The 2013 Houston Texans watched a promising season disintegrate the moment their protection collapsed around Matt Schaub. The pattern is consistent across eras: when an NFL team commits real money to a quarterback — and $15.5 million fully guaranteed is a real commitment — and then fails to build a functional wall in front of him, the investment evaporates. Brissett is not the franchise's future. He is the bridge. But bridges need foundations, and this one is crumbling before traffic has even started.
What makes this particularly damning is that the Cardinals saw it coming and still couldn't stop it. The Adams situation was known. The line's fragility was documented. The front office used a second-round pick on Bisontis specifically because they understood the problem — and now that pick is on IR, likely for the season, having played two games. Meanwhile, the gambling scandal that suspended personnel executive Ryan Gold has already compromised the organization's capacity to respond quickly and decisively to exactly this kind of cascading crisis. The people who should be working the phones right now are operating in a fractured front office.
The receivers give Brissett something to work with. Trey McBride produced 1,239 yards and 11 touchdowns last season. Michael Wilson crossed 1,000 yards. Marvin Harrison Jr. showed genuine promise in limited action. Those weapons are real. But weapons are irrelevant when the quarterback is on his back. And without Adams — whose availability remains unclear — and without Bisontis, the Cardinals are asking Brissett to take snaps behind a line that, by any honest accounting, has no proven depth whatsoever. My read is that unless this organization makes an aggressive move for veteran offensive line help in the next two weeks, Jonathan Gannon is going to spend 2026 watching his quarterback get hit early and often. The season doesn't have to be lost yet. But the window to prevent it is closing fast, and Arizona is burning daylight.