First it was introducing the future face of the offense, now it was the defense. On Thursday, a day after showing off new offensive coordinator Harold Goodwin to the press, Cardinals coach Bruce Arians brought Todd Bowles to the podium, his new defensive coordinator.
Bowles was previously a candidate to be the Cardinals' defensive coordinator two seasons ago before Ken Whisenhunt decided to hire Ray Horton away from the Pittsburgh Steelers. But when Arians became coach, he had no other person on his mind.
"There was never a doubt that if I got a head coaching job, that is who I was going to first," Arians said of selecting Bowles to run his defense. "I don't think there's any doubt he will be a head coach in this league soon."
"That meant the world to me," Bowles said of Arians choosing him as his DC.
Bowles comes to the Cardinals from the Philadelphia Eagles, a team that struggled mightily on the defensive side of the ball last season. Even so, Bowles doesn't think you can take too much from that.
"I don't think one year makes you a bad coach or a good coach," he said. "You go by your body of work. When things go down, good or bad, you can tell what a person really is. You stay even-keeled in this business. If you're in it long enough, you're not going to have success every week or every day. You try not to get too high or too low."
When asked if he thought his players gave up on him last season, he told reporters that he, "couldn't answer for them (the players he coached last season. You'd have to ask some of those guys."
The defense won't change much from how Ray Horton ran it as defensive coordinator the past two seasons. They will still run a 34 base defense and that will change depending on which players are healthy and the opponent they are playing. As we saw last year, the Cardinals played two down linemen in games like the one against the Patriots. That allowed them to insert an extra defensive back into the game.
Players like Daryl Washington and Patrick Peterson are the foundation for what Bowles wants to do here in Arizona. He bragged about both of these players, even if he hasn't had time to watch all the film on them yet. He noted that he has a "good beat" on some of the players after watching them come out of college, but he still has some research to do.
"I think they're fast, they get after it, they like to play football and they're hungry," Bowles said of his new defensive unit. "They play very fast and their tenacious and that's a great thing."
Bottom line: the Cards are going to do on defense what we all have become accustomed to with them. "We want to play a smart, fast, physical defense," Arians said. "We want to get after the quarterback."
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