Arizona went 3-14 last season, which looked like a disaster and mostly was — but the point differential tells a slightly different story. The Cardinals were outscored by 133 points across 17 games, a margin that our fitted model converts to 4.8 structural wins. The actual win total was 3. That gap of 1.8 wins is what the luck audit calls a negative delta: they played like a four-to-five-win team and were credited for three. For a rebuilding franchise, that distinction matters less than it would for a team on the playoff bubble — but it does mean the floor wasn't quite as low as the record suggested.

The one-score record is where the real bruising shows up. Arizona went 2-8 in games decided by one score. Close-game results are among the noisiest numbers in football — they correlate poorly with quality from year to year — but going 2-8 in those situations requires either sustained bad luck or a steady pattern of small execution failures in the fourth quarter. Probably some of both. Either way, it inflated the loss column in a way the point differential doesn't capture. The structural read heading into 2026 starts at 4.8 wins, not 3.

Almost nothing worked on offense at the per-play level, and the EPA profile doesn't soften that read. The Cardinals posted an offensive passing EPA of +0.01 per attempt — effectively league average through the air — and -0.06 per carry on the ground, which is a below-average rushing attack. Neither number is catastrophic in isolation, but they compound. A team that can't threaten you running the ball and generates barely positive value passing it has very little margin for error on third down. Arizona converted 45.7 percent of third and fourth downs, which is functional, and their red-zone EPA came in at -0.12 per play, which is not. Red-zone inefficiency is often a window into offensive line quality and quarterback decision-making near the end zone — two areas where this roster had obvious gaps.

The defense was where things got genuinely concerning. Opponents generated +0.17 EPA per passing attempt against Arizona — that's among the worst marks in the league, a number that says the pass defense was a reliable source of opponent scoring rather than a drag on it. Run defense held up better at -0.01 EPA per carry allowed, essentially neutral. So the picture is a team that could at least hold the line against the run but got carved up through the air with regularity.

Jonathan Gannon's decision index rounds out the picture. He agreed with our model on 73.3 percent of his fourth-down and situational calls, which is a middle-of-the-pack number. More telling: he cost the team an estimated 0.35 wins through in-game decisions, driven largely by a go-for-it rate of 12.8 percent on fourth down against a model recommendation of 31.4 percent. That's a meaningful gap — Gannon was leaving points and possessions on the field by punting situations the numbers say he should have pressed. The decision delta holds at zero entering 2026 because he's still the coach, but there's an obvious place to recover a fraction of a win without adding a single player.

The departures are meaningful in aggregate. Aaron Brewer left for Miami at $17.5 million per year — the priciest exit at 1.42 market wins — and the Cardinals let him walk without an obvious replacement at center. Jalen Thompson signed with Dallas at $11 million per year (0.85 market wins), leaving a hole at safety. Dalvin Tomlinson and Calais Campbell also moved on, costing the interior defensive line some veteran depth. In total, the departures represent real market value walking out the door, with no production-wins data available for those players to sharpen the estimate.

The arrivals are cheaper and, in most cases, correspondingly lower-ceiling. Isaac Seumalo comes from Pittsburgh at $10.5 million per year (0.81 market wins) and is the most credible addition — he brings legitimate starting experience at guard. Tyler Allgeier arrives from Atlanta at $6.1 million per year, a near-zero production-wins player (-0.01) who adds depth behind what figures to be a crowded backfield. Gardner Minshew at $5.75 million per year carries -0.85 production wins, a figure that reflects his actual output — the market priced him as a bridge, and the numbers confirm the label. Kendrick Bourne and Roy Lopez round out a group of serviceable additions, none of whom move the competitive needle significantly.

The one contract verdict worth flagging is Jacoby Brissett, who signed a one-year deal at $15.5 million — 90th percentile pay for a quarterback who produced at the 33rd percentile. At 32, with no aging multiplier in his favor, that gap is the definition of an overpay. The verdict would be wrong if Brissett finishes top-five in quarterback production this season — a top-five year makes the price fair and flips this verdict entirely. That's a real falsifier, and it's worth holding onto.

The draft class is where this front office made its actual bet. Third overall pick Jeremiyah Love at running back carries 2.28 chart wins — the highest positional value in the class by a wide margin. Second-round guard Chase Bisontis adds 1.07 chart wins, a sensible complement to the Seumalo signing given the offensive line's cap spending grade. Third-round quarterback Carson Beck out of Miami (FL) brings 0.76 chart wins and is almost certainly the long-term answer at the position, depending on how quickly Brissett's year plays out. The remaining picks — Kaleb Proctor, Reggie Virgil, Karson Sharar, and Jayden Williams — accumulate another 1.12 chart wins between them. Total draft class value: 5.03 chart wins, most of it concentrated at the top. The net offseason production swing lands at -0.87 wins on a production basis, -0.78 on market value.

The ledger hurts — modestly but clearly. The production-wins swing of -0.87 reflects the honest accounting of what arrived versus what departed, and there's not much to argue with in the underlying data. The offensive line cap spending grades at a -0.96 z-score relative to the league, meaning Arizona is investing near the bottom of the NFL at the one position group most correlated with point differential. The draft addresses that over time — Love and Bisontis are both interior-line-adjacent investments — but 2026 is not a year those rookies carry a unit.

The cap structure is worth understanding plainly. Budda Baker is the largest cap hit at 5.9 percent, followed by Josh Sweat at 5.0. The quarterback slot sits at 5.2 percent — split between Brissett (3.2%) and Minshew (1.7%) — which is historically low and gives Arizona real flexibility to move on if Beck develops faster than expected. The future proration obligation of $227 million is the number that requires watching; it represents dead money and deferred costs sitting on the books, and it constrains how aggressively the front office can reset.

The bright spots are real. Trey McBride is producing at the 100th percentile for tight ends while being paid at the 79th — that's genuine value, the kind that shows up in team efficiency numbers quietly. James Conner puts up 82nd-percentile production at 62nd-percentile cost. Michael Wilson at wide receiver is a 74th-percentile producer on a 51st-percentile deal. These three are covering for a roster with more albatross exposure than bargains. Bourne's 1.74 PPR per target on 53 looks arrived at too high a cost for 20th-percentile production, and Minshew's presence at 10th-percentile production is a headwind. Marvin Harrison Jr. at 2.9 percent of the cap is the name the entire offense needs to grow around — the brief doesn't carry his production percentile, but his cap share is modest enough that upside there doesn't cost flexibility elsewhere. The team is hurt for 2026, probably meaningfully. The longer arc is a different conversation.

Here is the arithmetic, stated plainly as an accounting projection from the ledger. The 2025 point differential supports 4.8 structural wins as the base. The offseason production swing adds -0.87 wins. The coaching staff is unchanged, so the decision delta holds at zero — though as noted above, Gannon's fourth-down rate leaves something on the table that doesn't require a personnel move to recover. The sum is 3.9 structural wins for 2026. This is not a pick or a bet. It is what the numbers add up to given what we know today.

The falsifier is straightforward: if Arizona finishes with seven or more wins, this projection is wrong and deserves to be called wrong. That would require either a significant positive swing in close-game results, faster-than-expected development from the rookie class — particularly Beck at quarterback — or a leap in the pass defense that the current personnel doesn't predict. Any one of those could happen. All three happening at once in year two of a rebuild is unlikely but not impossible, and naming the number that breaks the model is the most honest thing we can do with it.

The brief carries no vacated opportunity targets from departing players, which tells its own story — the Cardinals' passing offense didn't generate the kind of target concentration that leaves a clean hole to fill. What the arrival data does show: Kendrick Bourne saw 53 targets in 2025 and returned 92.1 PPR points, a rate of 1.74 PPR per target. That per-target efficiency is legitimate, but the production percentile (20th) and pay percentile (56th) flag him as a player the market has already discovered isn't moving the needle. His fantasy value depends almost entirely on target share in an offense that didn't distribute the ball efficiently last year.

Tyler Allgeier managed 123 PPR points on 16 targets in 2025 — his work was almost exclusively on the ground — but arrives in a backfield now featuring both Conner and Love. The math on his opportunity is difficult. Conner, meanwhile, is the quiet name worth monitoring: 82nd-percentile production at 62nd-percentile cost, still under contract, and now sharing a room with a first-round rookie who may not be ready to carry a full load immediately. If Love's transition takes a few weeks, Conner is the efficient option the price hasn't fully accounted for.

The genuine sleeper case — efficiency plus opportunity plus price — belongs to McBride. A tight end producing at the 100th percentile for his position on a 79th-percentile contract, attached to an offense that needed every efficient play it could generate last year. Whatever quarterback wins the job, the tendency to target the reliable option when things break down tends to favor tight ends in bad offenses. That's not a point projection. It's just where the efficiency and the situation point.

Everything above traces to a live instrument, and the receipts stay public: the GM boards carry Jonathan Gannon's decision card, the team's cap posture ($227M already charged to future caps), and every contract verdict with its falsifier and review date — including Jacoby Brissett (OVERPAY). When the season grades these reads, the grades post whether they flatter us or not.