As Arizona Cardinals build offense, tempo will be the key

Day one of the Arizona Cardinals 2019 training camp was different than most.

The buzz, the anticipation, and more than ever the tempo of the offense was something we have never seen in the desert before.

While it was simply one practice on day one of the training camp, the tempo and pace of the practice was different.

You can see that from the beginning the Arizona Cardinals are hoping to establish a different tempo to what they are doing.

In Kliff Kingsbury’s time in Lubbock, his offenses consistently ranked in the upper echelon of plays per game.

This is something he’d like to incorporate into the NFL. Kingsbury and the offense want to be around 90 plays a game in 2019.

That would be the most in the NFL and five more per game than what some of Kingsbury’s Red Raiders teams averaged, but there is a reason.

One of the keys to the tempo and pace of play is time between plays. The Cardinals in the Bruce Arians era were in the lower part of the time between plays, registering around 28 seconds between plays.

Kingsbury’s offenses were in the low 20 seconds, usually in the top 20 in college football.

This will do one thing for the Arizona Cardinals, if they can keep pace of play up, while also being in the top five of plays run per game, they’ll have an effective offense that is able to keep teams on their toes. If they are able to dictate the tempo of the game, it will be in their favor, especially with Kyler Murray at the helm.

Turning up the pace of play is dangerous. If the Cardinals are playing faster but not effectively, they’ll run down their defense early and often.

However, if they are able to run a high volume of plays at a breakneck pace, they’ll change the way Cardinals fans enjoy football for the foreseeable future.