Four days ago, I doled out rare praise to Monti Ossenfort for adeptly handling the Cardinals’ toughest contract situations.
And how did the Cardinals’ general manager repay that compliment? By caving to the demands of a backup quarterback and essentially lighting $10 million on fire.
Jacoby Brissett got his raise on Sunday, and even without an agent, made out like a bandit. A base salary jump to $15.5 million, plus incentives that could push it all the way to $21 million.
Mind you, Brissett was already under contract for less than $5 million this season and had exactly zero leverage. And yet, he somehow finessed the Cardinals out of a decent chunk of cap space they could have rolled over to next year, when they intend to start the climb out of the NFC basement.
Cardinals Won’t Win With or Without Brissett
It’s truly flummoxing the way Ossenfort handled this.
The Cardinals are 100-to-1 longshots to win the NFC West this season.
Not the Super Bowl. The division.
They are touchdown or more underdogs in their first 11 games this season, which means the season will likely be sunk in October.
The prudent play would have been to eschew any negotiations with Brissett. He could play under the current deal, or he could forfeit his salary and watch from home.
Because at the end of the day, does it really matter if the record sits at 3-8 or 1-10 after 11 games? The playoffs are not happening in 2026. A winning season is not happening in 2026. Respectability is not happening in 2026.
Ossenfort should have embraced this, but unfortunately he is on the hot seat and frantically trying to save his job by hitching his wagon to a career journeyman backup.
Look, if this were the Cardinals of 2013-16, with a very good roster elsewhere, then it would have made sense to give Brissett a raise and try to win games.
But the best move this year is to tank and hope one of the 2027 draft-eligible quarterbacks can come in next year and turn into a franchise guy.
Brissett Deal Could Cost Cardinals 2027 QB
Incredibly, not only did the Ossenfort give Brissett an extra $10 million, but he also made it harder to secure that game-changer. Brissett isn’t a good quarterback, but he’s a little better than Gardner Minshew and much better than Carson Beck.
By paying him this money, Arizona is going to trot him out for the majority of games this season, and won’t it be splendid when he wins two meaningless contests down the stretch so the Cardinals can finish 5-12 and select sixth in the draft instead of first?
Team owner Michael Bidwill never should have retained Ossenfort when head coach Jonathan Gannon was fired after the season.
His thin-ice GM panic-drafted Beck with the first pick of the third round, and now succumbed to Brissett’s demands, desperately trying to scrape together enough wins in 2026 to keep his job.
The Cardinals have a decent shot to turn things around if they land a good quarterback in next year’s draft, but per usual, organizational dysfunction is threatening to keep that from fruition.
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