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With the elimination of the San Francisco 49ers from the NFL playoffs, defensive coordinator Robert Saleh is officially available for hire.
Go hire him, Arizona Cardinals.
It’s been roughly two weeks since the Cardinals shocked the football landscape with the dismissal of now-former head coach Jonathan Gannon. Since then, we’ve had a Michael Bidwill and Monti Ossenfort presser claiming the fallout of a franchise-worst 3-14 season would result in a renewed priority of winning. A welcomed strategy for a franchise that has just 19 victories since 2022. At the very least, the firing of Gannon was done to send a message to a fanbase that was beyond over this current iteration of Cardinal football.
And they let ownership hear about it in the form of season ticket cancellations.
Since the presser, Ossenfort has spearheaded a coaching search that has seen Arizona attempt to contact more than 14 eligible candidates (that we know of). Like their 2023 search, Ossenfort is again casting a “wide net,” when in reality the answer isn’t all that complex. All the general manager has to do is look around at an NFC playoff picture that saw three of the final four participates reside in his own division. A division, mind you, that the Cardinals have just four victories in since 2022. A division that outscored the Cardinals by a whopping 90 points this past season.
The NFC West is where the big dogs play, and the Cardinals are merely their chew toy.
Cardinals Must Hire Robert Saleh
Credit where credit’s due, as Ossenfort has managed to secure first interviews with Seahawks OC Klint Kubiak, Rams OC Mike LaFleur, Rams DC Chris Shula and of course Saleh with San Francisco. All of the candidates are qualified, all would bring a much-needed level of juice and all would likely be open to stealing assistants from the division. But only Saleh has the nod of prior NFL head coach, something most Cardinals fans have as mandatory experience following the failures of Gannon, Kliff Kingsbury and Steve Wilks.
The Cardinals have not hired a prior head coach since they lucked into Bruce Arians back in 2013. Arians famously took over for an ill Chuck Pagano and promptly guided the Colts to the postseason, en route to NFL Coach of the Year honors. Before that, you’d have to go all the way back to Denny Green circa 2004 to find a true, prior NFL head coach that was hired by the Bidwill family.
The franchise is overdue, with Saleh the obvious candidate.
It’s not just because of his prior credentials, which boast a modest 20-36 record as the head coach of the New York Jets. Saleh famously had to endure “peak” Zach Wilson era via owner Woody Johnson while forging ahead to two straight 7-10 finishes. For what it’s worth, Jonathan Gannon would still be this franchise’s head coach had he won seven games this past season. Unlike Gannon, Saleh was able to master his side of the football for Gang Green en route to multiple top five finishes defensively. Since his departure, the Jets, as a franchise, rank dead last in defensive EPA.
Saleh knows what dealing with adversity looks like. He lived it every day reporting to Johnson, while simultaneously juggling the personalities of Wilson and Aaron Rodgers.
Upon being fired by the Jets in 2024, all while leading the AFC East, Saleh promptly landed back in San Francisco with his old pal Kyle Shanahan. Despite season-ending injuries to the likes of Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, Mykel Williams and so many others, Saleh led a coaching masterclass en route to a 12-win season and a playoff victory at Philadelphia. Everything the Arizona Cardinals tried to tell their fanbase about injuries this past season, the 49ers actually experienced. Instead of excuse-making through the media, San Francisco thrived turning adversity into results.
That’s what great coaching can do. That’s what Robert Saleh can do.
Can anyone say the same for the likes of Kubiak, LaFleur or Shula? Are any of those candidates positioned to overcome a franchise that recently finished dead last in the NFLPA Report Cards? Are we sure each of them are positioned to quickly put together a competitive coaching staff on the fly, something Saleh previously did during his stint with the New York Jets?
Remember that it was Saleh who originally tabbed Jeff Ulbrich to be his DC in New York, after largely only working as a position coach. Ulbrich has since blossomed into one of the league’s top defensive coaches.
Like Vance Joseph with the Denver Broncos, it’s OK to admit that someone is a good coach without necessarily being the right man to lead the Cardinals franchise. Joseph, a popular name connected to the team, had some high moments while operating as Kliff Kingsbury’s DC from 2019 to 2022.
However, when it came time for the Cardinals to contend in the NFC West, Joseph’s defense was not equipped to hang with the division’s elite. Too many times, the Cardinals squandered opportunities to lock up playoff berths and NFC West titles and instead were thwarted by opposing staffs in-division. Fast-forward to Joseph’s final year in the desert, and the now-Bronco DC allowed nearly 28 points per game against the NFC West (1-5).
Joseph doesn’t appear to garner much serious interest outside of Arizona, and is likely a safety net for owner Michael Bidwill, given how the veteran coach handled the disfunction that was the 2022 season. But make no mistake, this fanbase is not nostalgic for those days; Joseph was the assistant head coach for a team that completely bottomed out that season.
You had Vance Joseph in your building at the start of this rebuild and opted not to hire him. What’s changed now compared to then?
Which is why the appeal of the unknown can be alluring, for the Cardinals and their fanbase. Take someone like Shula, who has only been associated with winning his entire career. A hot candidate around the NFL, Shula would likely thrive in a place like Pittsburgh or Baltimore given their rich history of success and current infrastructure of stability. But would Shula, someone who has NEVER left Sean McVay’s side while in the NFL, be equipped to take on the rigors of coaching a franchise like Arizona?
This franchise demands someone seasoned. Someone who, frankly, has seen some shit and can help the Cardinals get through their own.
Kubiak and LaFleur are popular choices given their offensive backgrounds and elite NFL lineages. Both have operated, successfully, outside their current situations, and each would give the Cardinals a chance to jumpstart the next era of quarterback in the desert. Yet, when you consider the landscape of QB options in the upcoming draft combined with Bidwill’s expectations of winning in 2026 (which is the correct mindset, by the way), wouldn’t the Cardinals be better served to lean into next season as a defensive dominated team? If you’re Monti Ossenfort, how many more chances are you going to get to field a winning product as GM?
Enter Saleh.
Given their three-year rebuild, Ossenfort knows better than anyone that the cupboard isn’t bare with the Cardinals’ roster. This isn’t 2023 where the current brass was actively tearing this franchise down to the studs while hoarding draft picks in the process.
Saleh would enter a defensive room that sports the likes of Josh Sweat, Walter Nolen III, Darius Robinson, B.J. Ojulari, Jordan Burch, Cody Simon, Mack Wilson, Budda Baker, Will Johnson, Max Melton, Denzel Burke, Garrett Williams (hopefully), Dadrion Taylor-Demerson and potentially someone like Rueben Bain Jr. or Arvell Reese.
Unlike Joseph, who stymied the production of rookies during his tenure with the club, Saleh embraces youth, and would be someone Ossenfort could trust with the development of his prized draft classes. There are numerous players on this roster, a la Robinson, Ojulari and Melton, who would greatly benefit from a fresh start with a high-end defensive coach.
And if you’re Ossenfort, you need these draft picks to work for the benefit of your own job stability.
The pairing makes sense, which is why the Cardinals were quick to request Saleh’s interview one day into their search. And after a rigorous week of attempting to balance prepping for Seattle in the divisional round and squeezing in interviews, Arizona finally got some Saleh face time late Wednesday night. Next steps are murky, with Saleh’s 49ers taking a beating in Seattle on Saturday. While interest from other teams remains solid, he no longer feels like a lock to secure a job this cycle.
That is, unless the Cardinals make the correct decision and lure him to the desert now.
And make no mistake, this will be a two-way street with the 49ers also having something to say. San Francisco GM John Lynch recently stated that his team could make it difficult for Saleh to walk away even for a head coaching job. Then there’s the media is the Bay Area openly mocking the Cardinals for having interest in Saleh in the first place.
Yet those around the 46-year-old remain adamant that he’s ready to become a head coach again.
And the Cardinals need to match that desire with a coaching package too good to pass up. Any contract with Saleh would likely need to eclipse 6 million to 7 million per season, a figure that Lynch will undoubtedly match this offseason while making him the highest paid defensive coordinator in football. While Jonathan Gannon’s contract paid him in the neighborhood of 6 million per season, Kingsbury’s extension reportedly exceeded 7 million back in 2022. The running narrative of the Cardinals opting to go cheap with their coaches has made its way to the mainstream, and it’s something Bidwill would be wise to extinguish as soon as possible.
A fanbase shouldn’t need to worry about whether or not their favorite team is going to actively spend money to get better.
The Cardinals are just two seasons away from the launch of their new, state-of-the-art, 217-acre training facility in North Phoenix. It’s an investment that undoubtedly will demand a solid stream of revenue leading in. Which is why it would be wise to match this serious investment with another in the form of an elite coaching candidate. Otherwise, you’re just bailing water as State Farm Stadium continues to be a breeding ground for opposing fanbases – fanbases that too often feel right at home, especially during division play. And that’s where it starts and ends for Bidwill and Ossenfort.
Until the Cardinals decide to get serious about punching back in the NFC West, they will remain its punching bag. While hiring Gannon was admirable, even he underestimated the rigors of this division. Drew Petzing and Nick Rallis were no match against the NFC West’s opposing coordinators, and when the wheels finally fell off, it was a feeding frenzy that saw all three “rivals” pull starters in the third and fourth quarters of games.
That’s the stench that the Cardinals must attempt to wash out in the hopes of winning back those they’ve lost during this prolonged period of failure. A reunion tour with Vance Joseph isn’t going to do that. Fair or not, for the Arizona Cardinals to succeed in the NFC West, they have to kill it from the inside.
And Robert Saleh is the man to do it.
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