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.
Continue reading over at First and Pen.
This content has been brought to you by First and Pen in partnership with TheHub.News. First and Pen “amplifies local sports stories from voices of color to the national conscience…”
