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This is from Peter King's Football Morning in America May 1st Issue:
Arizona Owns 2024
The new Arizona GM, Monti Ossenfort, got off to an inauspicious start Thursday, having to admit he erred by making a phone call to Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon outside the permitted time for contacting coaching candidates during the playoffs. The Cardinals paid a 28-slot penalty in round three, moving down from 66 to 94 with Philadelphia as part of Ossenfort’s penance. “I made a mistake. I own that,” he said. After that, he had a strong weekend.
Ossenfort, with more holes to plug than any GM in football, made three trades in the first 34 picks—with Houston, Detroit and Tennessee. The upshot: Ossenfort traded the third overall pick, plus picks in the second, fourth and fifth rounds. In return, he got pick six (tackle Paris Johnson), pick 41 (linebacker BJ Ojulari) and pick 72 (cornerback Garrett Williams), plus a first-round pick in 2024 and two third-round picks in 2024.
The Cardinals now are scheduled to own a league-high six picks in the first three rounds next year, and the first-rounders could be pure gold. PFF data analyst Timo Riske reported that after simulating the 2023 season 10,000 times, Arizona and Houston were favored to be the two worst teams in the NFL this season. Each team, PFF said, has a 46 percent chance to have a top-five pick in the draft next year—which would mean, of course, that Arizona would have two of the top five picks in the draft next year.
Think what that could mean. Clearly, it would leave Arizona as the leader in the clubhouse for the top pick in the draft, or the ability to deal for the top pick, which could be a great quarterback—maybe Caleb Williams of USC or North Carolina’s Drake Maye. That, of course, puts pressure on Kyler Murray with a new coaching staff and administration and coming off knee surgery, to show he’s a premier player when he returns sometime this fall.
Ossenfort told me Saturday night he didn’t go into the draft with a plan to deal for so much 2024 draft currency—that’s just the way the trades fell. He did admit he made the first deal with Houston with the idea of trading back up. “It was important with that first trade to retain the option to move back up,” he said. And that, of course, was for Ohio State tackle Paris Johnson, the best tackle in the draft. The Cardinals got him at six, just ahead of the Raiders, who may have taken Johnson at seven.
One more point. If Arizona, Houston and Tennessee all struggle next year and all finish below .500, the Cardinals would have six picks in the top 75, including two early in the first round. Ossenfort may not have gone into this draft with an intention of owning the 2024 draft, but that’s exactly how it turned out.
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