Football Outsiders and the Arizona Cardinals

When I took over Revenge of the Birds I knew one of the perks would be getting to talk shop with some of the bigger names in the business.

When the chance to ask five questions to Football Outsiders arose, I jumped on it. Getting an article from such a great source would be awesome.

Well, the response was more than expected, so over the next five days we'll take a look at one response everyday.

Here is part one with Scott Kascmar.

Arizona Cardinals (Scott Kacsmar)

1. The Arizona Cardinals have been on the best three year run since the move to Arizona, is their success sustainable moving forward with the team construction?

Any time your quarterback is about to turn 37, you're in win-now mode. Arizona's window is really tied to Palmer's age, so that means about two or three more seasons as I do not think the next starting quarterback is currently on the roster. Do I believe Bruce Arians can groom another quarterback that could potentially be found in free agency or the draft in a few years? Sure, but those are always hard to find. The good news is Arizona should have some building blocks to keep things afloat for life after Palmer, with expectations that Chandler Jones will get a long-term deal, and a younger core of players such as David Johnson, Tyrann Mathieu, Patrick Peterson, Markus Golden, Deone Bucannon, John Brown, Robert Nkemdiche, etc. But the NFC West is a tough division, and Seattle is not going away anytime soon. The Rams keep adding talent, waiting to find a better coach, and San Francisco has a new coach, but needs a lot of talent. Arizona needs to deliver this season.

I tend to agree with Scott here. The Arizona Cardinals window, as constructed, hangs on Carson Palmer.

That being said, outside of the future quarterback, I think the Arizona Cardinals have been built extremely well and should be similar, at worst, to the LA Rams where they're around 7-9 to 9-7.

What do you think?