Mike LaFleur was introduced as the new head coach of the Arizona Cardinals on Tuesday. LaFleur did the obligatory I'm excited to be here stuff, but also acknowledged just how hard the job was going to be. And yet somehow he might be downplaying it.
"You think about this division. It's a tough division," said LaFleur. "I mean, if it were easy it wouldn't be worth it."
If LaFleur was looking for a tough job, he found it. Arizona is coming off a 3-14 season and finished 4-13 twice in the last four years on top of that. Its best season since Kliff Kingsbury took the team to their only postseason in the last decade was 8-9 in '24.
The Cardinals' highly paid quarterback, Kyler Murray, has missed 27 games in the last four seasons. They had one of the worst defenses in the entire NFL last season. And that's all before you even get to the division.
The Seahawks were tied for the best record in the NFL last season and are in the Super Bowl. The second and third place teams in the NFC West also had the second and third best records in the conference. A quarter of the teams that won double-digit games in the NFL this season are in the NFC West. The Cardinals are going to have to leapfrog at least two playoff teams to even finish second in their division next season.
If LaFleur can get this team over .500 next season it would be a tremendous turnaround. If he needs inspiration he only needs to look to his brother Matt who took over a 6-9-1 Packers team and immediately won 13 games in three straight seasons. He certainly made it seem easy.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Mike LaFleur May Be Underrating How Hard the Cardinals Job Will Be.
