Cardinals' Evolving Culture Evident After Gutsy Performance

The new-look Arizona Cardinals fought out a gutsy win against the Denver Broncos on Friday night.

The Arizona Cardinals are entering the 2023 NFL season with very low expectations from outside forces. A large amount of pundits and fans alike feel like it's all but assured this team will finish as a bottom three team in the league. 

Quarterback Kyler Murray is recovering from a torn ACL and it is unclear when he will make his debut this season. Much of the roster - and coaching staff - is inexperienced in positions they now find themselves in.

Monti Ossenfort is a first-time general manager. The same goes for head coach Jonathan Gannon and his two coordinators in Drew Petzing (offense) and Nick Rallis (defense, and at 29 years old was the youngest coordinator in the league when hired). 

Everything going against the team this season won't stop Gannon and Ossenfort from instilling a culture that's a complete 180 from Kliff Kingsbury and Steve Keim.

Ossenfort has done a masterful job of getting the right players and the future looks to be bright, even if the present is bleak. Gannon and the rest of the staff have been vocal about winning and doing whatever it takes to handle business. Many players including longtime tackle D.J. Humphries have alluded to the seismic change in culture. 

"It was good. Happy for the guys. You know what I mean? They're all juiced up, but they know they gotta go back to work tomorrow. Any time you put that much in, [regardless if] it's a preseason game, any game that you play - you play to win, and you put a lot into it. So it's important for us to win," said Gannon on Friday night.

The Cardinals' defensive line, frequently pegged as one of the NFL's worst units, fought tirelessly at the line of scrimmage in the team's first preseason game against the Denver Broncos - regardless of what unit Sean Payton rolled out. 

Arizona found themselves down 10-0 at halftime but pulled out a strong comeback to win in 18-17 fashion, which included a two-minute drill that saw a touchdown scored with two seconds left before successfully converting a two-point conversion to put the Cardinals ahead for good. 

Rallis is seemingly a very inventive defensive mind and was getting the most out of just about everyone on that side of the ball. Cameron Thomas was particularly impressive and looks to be one of the many young players to be a serious contributor this year. 

On his side of the ball, Petzing took some time to get into a groove, but didn't have Marquise Brown or James Conner at his disposal either. The play-calling on the last drive was incredibly impressive and the creativity/lack of repetitiveness was a breath of fresh air - quarterbacks Clayton Tune and David Blough showed flashes of belonging on this team as a result. 

"I told the team the most important thing is: the good, the bad and the ugly, we got to learn from it. So we got to clean up some mistakes - all three phases and we gotta get a little bit better from this tape," Gannon said following the win. 

"With saying that, I liked how they competed. I thought they ran well and hit well. We had some things that we executed down the stretch there that was really the difference between winning and losing games."

One may argue this is only the preseason, and it shouldn't mean a whole lot. While this is normally valid, this Cardinals team has a new front office, a new coaching staff, and a roster with many depth chart battles in progress. 

When a team is this widely picked to be a bottom feeder, there needs to be some reason to be hopeful. 

The way this team fought back to win the game should give Cardinals fans hope this season. 

Even if there are ugly results at different points, this team will be hard-pressed to quit pushing hard every rep.