Winning has not come easy to Arizona Cardinals star TE Trey McBride, from the start of his college career until now.

In four seasons (40 games) with Mountain West-dwelling Colorado State University, McBride was never afforded the chance to play a bowl game. The Rams went 11-29 during his college career.

And since McBride was drafted by former Cardinals GM Steve Keim ahead of the 2022 NFL season, Arizona has not been better. The Cardinals are 20-53 and counting while the star TE has been part of the franchise.

It would be understandable for a player of McBride’s caliber — and his four-year, $76 million paycheck — to want out of an organization that routinely finds itself living in the NFL’s basement, well outside the realm of national relevancy (and, often respect).

The losses almost certainly eat away at McBride on some level, as they do other Cardinals players, coaches and fans. But the 27-year-old isn’t looking for an escape hatch. He wants to live through the arduous journey back to competency.

Trey McBride wants to be part of Cardinals’ turnaround

McBride’s personal accolades have not suffered as a result of his teams’ poor records. In fact, without those individual milestones, the Cardinals likely win even fewer games.

The tight end works hard for his own production, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been difficult to play losing football for so long.

“It sucks, man. We sucked in college. We didn’t win a lot of games. For four years, it was hard. We didn’t go to a bowl game. Every year before I got to college, they were good, and they went to a bowl game, and then I got there, and it just didn’t happen. And we haven’t been very successful [in Arizona],” he said.

But McBride welcomes that challenge. He wants to persevere past the brutal losing seasons and help create a culture of winning football for success-starved Cardinals fans.

“The tide’s gonna turn,” McBride said. “And it’s fun because I want to be part of the dog days. I want to be part of the times where we weren’t good, and then, it’s like, we turned it around, and we’re good now.

“This is a team that drafted me, this is a team that believed in me from the get-go. Why not do everything I can for them? They believed in me, and I have full confidence in this coaching staff, this organization, everything about it. They believe in me, and I’m just gonna give everything I can back to them. And I know we’re right there, and I’m just excited to see the fruit of that.”

Fans probably don’t want to hear that the Cardinals are “close.” That has been a repeated mantra in these lean years — one that’s driven many a supporter to excess frustration. But McBride believes it.

“We’re close, we’re gonna turn this thing around, we’re right there,” he said. “It’s a team game; it takes 11 guys. … Even the individual success, it’s hard to do without everybody on my team. So just control what you can control. Get better each and every week, and the wins are coming.

“I know how good we can be. We’ve seen it in spurts, and I know how good we’re gonna be,” he added. “But we can’t just keep saying we’re gonna get better. We have to prove it. We have to show it. We have to do it every single week.”

McBride is on pace for another quality season, albeit in an offense that has struggled with consistency under head coach Mike LaFleur and behind the QB play of Jacoby Brissett. McBride set records with his 162 receptions, 1,239 yards and 11 touchdowns in a dismal 3-14 2025 season. He has 308 yards and three scores through five weeks of 2026.

But as hard as it may be to stomach what might feel like blind or misguided optimism, McBride’s belief in his organization is the very mindset a fanbase should want from its franchise star. When that faith waivers, so too can a player’s effort. Younger players looking up to a star like McBride can, in turn, mirror that behavior. McBride believes and plays hard, and that’s a good thing for Arizona’s locker room.

Despite the obvious differences in player, team situation and wholesale career, it’s reminiscent of the mindset famously and legendarily held by king Cardinal Larry Fitzgerald over 17 mostly-unsuccessful seasons. The Cardinals can’t let McBride suffer a similarly-ringless fate.

McBride could be Cardinals’ next Fitzgerald — they can’t waste him

Fitzgerald was no stranger to losing. Despite some outlier years with Kurt Warner, Carson Palmer and Bruce Arians, the Cardinals spent 17 seasons’ worth of Fitzgerald posting a 126-144 record.

That is, obviously, a better winning percentage (.467) than McBride’s pace of .377, but it came with plenty of hardship. Fitzgerald caught many a pass from quarterbacks who had little business playing in the NFL, under more than one coaching staff with a similar lack of success.

That didn’t matter to Fitzgerald, who spent every game of his illustrious career fighting to bring a Lombardi trophy to Arizona. He didn’t make public spectacle of the franchise; he didn’t fight over contracts; and he didn’t demand a trade to a contender.

When opportunities to leave might have arisen, Fitzgerald did not push the idea down the road. He famously said he felt that winning elsewhere would not have been as special as winning with the Cardinals. It’s a tragedy that he, while enshrined in the Hall of Fame, does not have a ring to accompany his gold jacket. But he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

If that is the path McBride is truly on — and for the long haul — the Cardinals must do everything in their power to avoid seeing another potential Hall of Famer live in the shadow of his franchise’s futility.

That means changes have to come, and soon. McBride may embrace the “dog days,” but one day they simply have to end. Health, faith and production may not last another 12 seasons for McBride. He may never be the same player Fitzgerald was, but that doesn’t matter.

The franchise’s current brightest light has earned the right to play with a high-caliber QB. McBride’s team is lacking for strong management, deep personnel and holistic coaching success. He deserves a chance to depart this franchise — whenever that may be — having left it in better shape than when he arrived.

And yet, McBride still believes success is one game away.

“I feel like we just need one to go our way, and this is a week that it could turn,” he said. “It’s like a domino effect. One turns into two, and two turns into three, and who knows? We’re right there, we’re fighting, we’re close, and the tide’s gonna change.”

The dog days aren’t over yet, though.