👋 GOOD MORNING – If you’re reading this, that means the Arizona Cardinals have already completed their interview with 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh.
It’s been a pretty rough coaching cycle so far, and the Cardinals seem to be behind the curve on the entire process. After John Harbaugh reportedly entered the final stages of a deal with the Giants late Wednesday night, the high-end options got that much thinner.
Let’s see where Arizona stands in this whole mess!
— Alex D’Agostino, PHNX Sports Daily Editor
Robert Saleh Takes Last-Minute Interview with Cardinals
So the Cardinals had been, for lack of a better term… screwing around in their search for the franchise’s next head coach.
Sure, they had some names on the list with intrigue: Mike LaFleur, Klint Kubiak, and some other coach by the name of “preliminary and extensive phone call” (before Harbaugh came off the board).
But the news started drying up pretty fast. There are currently 13 names on the list of Arizona’s potential candidates, and with respect to these men who have earned prestigious jobs at the highest possible level, they were mostly names that lacked “juice” — a term our friends Johnny and Bo have coined through this agonizing early part of the search.
Robert Saleh is a name that has juice. Saleh himself brings a lot of it to the field every day. You can tell by the way his injury-decimated unit has performed lately.
Yesterday afternoon, it was reported Saleh would interview for the Miami Dolphins job last night, and would interview for the Titans and Ravens jobs Sunday. The Cardinals had requested an interview with him at the beginning of this cycle, but they were once again snubbed from the schedule. Until…
…Arizona was noted as a last-minute addition to Saleh’s interview slate. Adam Schefter reported Saleh to have scheduled a “late-night” interview with the Cardinals. Per Josina Anderson, that interview has since concluded.
My Take: I’d give the usual “don’t let him out of the building,” but the interview was over Zoom, since the 49ers are playing the Seahawks (look at all those NFC West teams left in the playoffs) on Saturday night.
The point stands. The Cardinals need to be serious about this. Obviously, they can’t force Saleh to take the job, and there’s still a possibility one of their other candidates would be a better fit, but Saleh is a big fish in this coaching cycle, and has to be treated as such by Monti Ossenfort and Michael Bidwill.
Fans might easily point to Saleh’s unsuccessful head coach tenure with the New York Jets as a mark against him. And in response to that I’d point out the fact that Saleh won seven games in back-to-back seasons (2022-2023) with the likes of Zach Wilson, Mike White, Trevor Siemien and some other interesting names at quarterback.
In total, he won 20 games with the Jets (the Jets) in three-and-roughly-a-third seasons in New York. Jonathan Gannon won 15 games in his three seasons with the Cardinals. It’s also worth noting Jets’ defense was a team strength for those two seven-win seasons. They weren’t losing games because Saleh’s side of the football wasn’t performing — they had no offense.
The Cardinals have talent defensively that hasn’t reached its potential. They don’t have a QB, but they do have some playmakers on the offensive side.
Arizona has looked unprepared in this coaching search, and has seemed to just be snapping up every and any possible candidate, while failing to make much progress with the higher-demand coaches. That has to change soon if they want to turn this around.
Hiring Saleh might not fix everything, but it would be a hire Ossenfort and Bidwill could sell to a fanbase that is fed up and tired of consuming an ugly product on a yearly (weekly, daily) basis.
By the way, if you’d like to get daily updates on every twist and turn in the Cardinals’ coaching search, check out PHNX Cardinals’ coaching tracker, updated daily by yours truly:
Arizona Cardinals 2026 Coaching Search Tracker
Quick Hits
Downed in Detroit: The Suns (without Devin Booker) fought hard against both the East-leading Pistons and some strange officiating, but ultimately fell 108-105 on the road last night. Grayson Allen had a heroic 33 points, but the rest of Phoenix’s scorers were held to under 20 points each.
Not the Senator: MLB’s international signing period began, and the Diamondbacks brought in a massive class of 18 signees. I’m not going to list them all here, sorry. But Cuban shortstop Ruben Gallego (no, not that Ruben Gallego) was the headliner, ranking among MLB’s top 50 international prospects. That’s a good get for the D-backs.
These players are not to be ignored, though… Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte were once international free agents.
On the major league side, Arizona reunited with an old friend — right-handed reliever Taylor Clarke. Clarke was drafted by the D-backs in 2015 and spent his first three major league seasons in the desert, but threw to a career-best 3.25 ERA with the Kansas City Royals in 2025. He’ll join the major league bullpen on a one-year deal — and yes, he is the first non-MiLB reliever Arizona has signed this offseason…
