Cardinals given middling grades for offseason moves

The news that DeAndre Hopkins would be suspended six games due to violating the NFL’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) likely threw a wrench into the team’s offseason plans and may have precipitated the trade for Marquise Brown on draft night. A first-round pick — even a relatively low one — for Brown is pretty rich given the contract he will be demanding soon, but there is good logic to believe he will be a more impactful player in the desert than he was for Baltimore. Brown was a star in college with Kyler Murray as his quarterback, and Murray led the league in big-time throw rate last season (7.9%).

Most of the team’s focus in free agency was in re-signing its own players, though it failed to keep Chandler Jones — the team’s best pass-rusher. It’s also easy to criticize the money given to James Conner as a lapse in judgment. The year Conner just had is an argument against paying him, not one in support of the move.

In the draft, Trey McBride adds to an already well-stocked tight end room, and then the team set about adding pass-rushers that can help replace the production lost in Jones’ departure. Overall, Arizona may not have deteriorated over the offseason, but it likely didn’t get a whole lot better, either.