The 2025 season may prove to be a make-or-break campaign for the Arizona Cardinals, specifically on the offensive side of the ball. The Cardinals spent most of their resources on defense during the 2025 offseason, remaking their defensive line and secondary in a major way. But just because the Cardinals offense remains mostly the same from last season, it doesn’t mean there aren’t lingering issues.
Yes, the Cards ranked 12th in the NFL in scoring and 11th in total yards in 2024, but from a schematic standpoint, Arizona left plenty of meat on the bone last season. It was the talent of their personnel that propped up a relatively vanilla attack put together by offensive coordinator Drew Petzing.
However, if you take the word of Cardinals tight end Trey McBride, this may all change in 2025. Petzing and the rest of the offensive staff is adding a good amount of ‘sauce’ to the metaphorical meal, ensuring that no meat gets left on the bone in 2025. Why not do all you can to let Kyler Murray, Marvin Harrison Jr., James Conner and McBride eat as much as they want?
“The plays they’re putting in, it’s not as fundamental, it’s not as basic. They’re adding a lot of motions, and a lot of sauce is what I call it. Just putting a little extra flavor on the same plays that we have, maybe motion guys to it, running different guys in different things. So definitely a lot more complex. Trying to stick to our main concepts we have, but dressing them up in different ways.”
Last season, the Cardinals used motion at the snap on just 18 percent of their plays, ranking 27th in the league, according to Sportico. That actually represented a slight increase from the season prior, when they ranked 30th in the NFL in the same category. But given where Drew Petzing comes from, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that there was a lack of motion used in Arizona each of the last few seasons.
Petzing was on Kevin Stefanski’s staff in Cleveland for three years prior to joining the Arizona Cardinals. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that last season, the Browns ranked 31st in motion at the snap.
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That’s not to say that “sauce” is necessarily the main ingredient among the league’s best offenses. Last year, the Miami Dolphins and Atlanta Falcons led the league in motion at the snap, but ranked 22nd and 17threspectively in points per game, and 23rd and 9th in yards per play.
However, among the other seven teams who used motion at the snap on more than 30 percent of their plays, five of them – Baltimore, Detroit Tampa Bay, San Francisco, Green Bay – made up the top five in yards per play in 2024.