Jared Cohen is a longtime Arizona Sports Multimedia journalist After a couple years on hiatus in the private sector, he's back with his first column for ArizonaVarsity.
Ask any of the friends I annoy with my group text threads these days, I’ve been pretty harsh when it comes to Steve Keim.
He had a remarkable start to his tenure as General Manager of the Arizona Cardinals. He made smart, shrewd moves, and was blessed with that little stroke of luck that all good front office executives need.
But things that worked on early, and the bit of luck Keim had found, came back to bite him as the NFL evolved evolve and adjusted.
To be honest, Steve Keim deserved to be relieved of his duties during the 2019 offseason, but Michael Bidwill opted to give him another shot with the most important duty a General Manager has- another coaching hire after the previous offseason's exhaustive search ultimately resulted in firing Steve Wilks after one year.
It is my opinion, however, that once Bidwill made the decision to stand by Steve Keim while he hired recently fired Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury, and pressed the reset button on the franchise's quarterback plans by drafting Kyler Murray first overall, the narrative of Steve Keim needing to be fired should not have been spoken of for at least three full seasons.
But of course, fans and media members continued to call for Steve Keim to get canned during the 2019 season, and those who did so just don’t get it. Removing the person in charge of executing a radical new vision would be a worse decision than any of the objectively bad decisions Steve Keim had made over the last handful of seasons.
Steve Keim, and Michael Bidwill for that matter, need to be afforded every opportunity to see this risk they made through to the end... and not just because they may or may not deserve it. Instead, it's because Kliff and Kyler do.
Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray need to be given every chance to carry out the initial vision outlined for them. They deserve a team to be built for and around them, and deserve to be set up for success. Firing their boss would not allow that.
A new GM coming in for a fired Steve Keim could say all the right things about building around the talent in the building in order to to get hired, or win the press conference, but he (or she!) will ultimately do what all managers do- whatever what they need to do to stay employed. Much more often than not, a GM bringing in their own coach and quarterback is the formula for keeping them in a job long term.
Now that I've got all that off my chest, it's time to spike the football on exactly why keeping Steve Keim was the right move- The 2020 NFL Draft. You can tell Steve Keim recognizes that the offseason is no longer a time to get cute. They haven’t messed around with free agents, they definitely didn’t mess around making a trade for a guy like DeAndre Hopkins, and in this draft, they went after high quality Power 5 football players at multiple positions. He wasn't letting details slip through the cracks by spending his energy overturning every stone to find speedster from Pittsburg State, or taking a chance on a running back-turned-defensive back from Texas A&M.
Isaiah Simmons, Josh Jones and Leki Fotu are former conference leaders, team captains and experienced ball players. It’s felt like those are the types of players this team has been missing. Who knows, maybe it was Bruce Arians that forced Keim to chase after high-risk, high-reward players... but that doesn’t seem to be his formula anymore. This whole project here is Steve Keim’s, and no one else’s. He deserves next season, and even one more beyond that (at least) to see this vision through. More than anything, the Arizona Cardinals needs a stable and consistent environment to be successful, and judging by the moves made this offseason, that success could arrive sooner than some thought possible do many discontented fans just one year ago.
