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Football Outsider’s looks at the pairing of Mike McCoy and Sam Bradford for the Arizona Cardinals

Talking shop with FO to take a look at five pressing issues heading into the 2018 season for the Arizona Cardinals.

NFL: Arizona Cardinals at New Orleans Saints Chuck Cook-USA TODAY Sports

Every year SB Nation is fortunate enough to do a question and answer session with the fine folks over at Football Outsiders.

They are the original analytics site, that takes a deeper look at the game of football from a number of angles.

Well, this year for the Cardinals much is changing, new head coach, new coaching staff, new quarterback, new offensive and defensive schemes.

That gave us plenty to talk about with FO.

Over the next five days we will look at questions with:

Mike McCoy and Sam Bradford?

David Johnson’s expectations?

Offensive line improvements?

Does the new defensive scheme help or hurt Chandler Jones?

How will the new zone schemes work with the Cardinals?

We start with one of the top quesions coming into the season:

  1. Does Mike McCoy’s offense play enough to the strengths of Sam Bradford?

Carl Yedor from FO: Mike McCoy is implementing a more conservative offensive scheme compared to how Bruce Arians aggressively attacked defenses down the field during his time in the desert. That could play to Bradford’s strengths, as he was a solidly average quarterback when he was most recently healthy in 2016.

Minnesota probably would have been a little more aggressive pushing the ball down field that year had their offensive line not disintegrated in a cloud of injuries, but Bradford was able to get the ball out of his hands quickly that year in setting what was then the record for completion percentage in a full season.

While he was only 16th in DYAR and 17th in DVOA that year, those marks would represent a big step up from what Arizona got from their quarterbacks last year.


What do you think? Are you excited about the pairing of McCoy and Bradford?