The Cardinals' Offensive Line Is Already Broken, and Chase Bisontis Just Made It Worse

Chase Bisontis played two NFL games. Two. He was carted off the field in the second one with a torn MCL, and he will undergo surgery next week. The Cardinals' second-round pick — the only player on this roster who carried genuine draft capital and a realistic path to starting-caliber play on the offensive line — is now expected to miss all or most of the 2026 season. This is not a depth chart inconvenience. This is the collapse of a plan.

Here is why it matters so acutely: the Cardinals came into this offseason with Isaiah Adams, their projected starting guard, already in legal jeopardy stemming from a guns and gangs investigation in Canada. That situation has not resolved. The organization's contingency for Adams was Bisontis — a high-investment pick brought in specifically to push for that starting job and provide insurance if Adams became unavailable. That insurance policy is now shredded. What remains behind Adams on the interior line is a group with no meaningful production on record from last season. Hjalte Froholdt has logged snaps. Everyone else on the guard and tackle depth chart is essentially untested at this level. The Cardinals are not thin at offensive line — they are structurally exposed.

The timing compounds everything. Arizona guaranteed Jacoby Brissett $15.5 million on a one-year deal this offseason precisely because they needed stability at quarterback after a 3-14 catastrophe. That investment only makes sense if the people in front of Brissett can keep him upright. Right now, with Adams' availability uncertain and Bisontis gone for the year, the math on that protection is genuinely alarming. You cannot build around quarterback continuity and simultaneously allow the offensive line to deteriorate into a revolving door of question marks. One undermines the other completely.

This franchise has watched this movie before, and it never ends well. Teams that enter a season with unresolved legal clouds over a starting lineman and no viable backup option behind him tend to find out the hard way — usually around Week 4, when the starter is unavailable and the replacement is overwhelmed. The 2025 Cardinals went 3-14 and closed with nine straight losses, outscored by nearly eight points a game. A meaningful portion of that collapse traced back to protection breakdowns and roster holes the organization never adequately filled. Bisontis was supposed to represent a correction. Instead, he is the latest entry in a growing ledger of things that have gone wrong before the season even begins.

My read is this: the Cardinals have no good options at offensive line right now, and they need to acknowledge that publicly and act on it aggressively. The veteran free agent market at this stage of August is thin, but it exists. The alternative — rolling into September with Adams' legal situation unresolved and no credible depth behind him — is not a calculated risk. It is organizational negligence dressed up as patience. Jonathan Gannon has enough fires burning across this roster, from the cornerback depth crisis to a receiving corps running on fumes, to absorb another self-inflicted wound on the line. The Bisontis injury was bad luck. What happens next is a choice.