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I believe the two guys who’d have been under consideration for Arizona with the No. 3 pick were Ohio State tackle Paris Johnson Jr. and Alabama edge rusher Will Anderson Jr.
They wound up with Johnson (who I think they preferred), and a more, with new GM Monti Ossenfort dropping back nine picks, then going back up six. Here’s how it all shook out …
• The Cardinals gave up the third, the 34th, 105th and 168th picks.
• They got Johnson, plus the 33rd and 81st picks this year, and first- and third-round picks in 2024.
Or, if you want to simplify this, they got Johnson, moved their second-round pick up a spot (34 to 33), and sent fourth- and fifth-round picks away for a third-rounder this year, and first- and third-rounders next year. Which shows, to me, impressive command for the draft class by a rookie GM.
So how’d Ossenfort do it? Well, it starts with identifying Johnson. Arizona felt like the Buckeyes star crushed the predraft process, including a 30 visit the big man made to Tempe to see his future team. On that visit, he told Ossenfort and Gannon that his family’s history with the franchise—his dad, a defensive back out of Miami of Ohio, was drafted by the team in 1999—gave him business to finish in Arizona.
“I want to be here,” he told them.
Now, it’d be easy for any kid to say that to any team, but it came off as genuine to Ossenfort and Gannon. And it’d be meaningful, too, with the new bosses in Arizona looking for guys who had clean profiles who could grow into the “program guy” types that would make the Valley a good place for players to go.
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As for the maneuvering itself, it really started with calls during the week to engage teams on coming up for the pick, with those bleeding into the hours before the draft, and the relationship Ossenfort had with Texans GM Nick Caserio (the two worked together for 14 seasons in New England). After Caserio took Ohio State QB C.J. Stroud (more on that later) at No. 2, at least one team interested in the third pick dropped off. But Ossenfort knew the Texans, because of his relationship with Caserio, would stay in.
The Cardinals took negotiations all the way until there were two minutes left on the clock, with other teams seeing the price as too high—a price that Ossenfort set with the desire to either get a pick in the range where the Cardinals would still get a player in their top cluster of prospects, or get enough back to get back into that range. The latter materialized with a monster package coming back from Houston (Nos. 12, 33, and the first and third picks in 2024).
From there, the Cardinals leaned on another relationship, between Lions GM Brad Holmes and their own assistant GM Dave Sears, who Ossenfort hired away from Detroit in February. The Colts weren’t moving, and it’d have been tough to do a deal in the division with Seattle, which left the Lions sitting there at six—and giving Arizona a chance to leapfrog another offensive line-hungry team in Vegas for Johnson. And that extra second-round pick they had—at 33—from Houston made it easy for the Cardinals to deal their slotted No. 2 at 34.
The Cardinals, by the way, then dealt 33 to the team Ossenfort came from, in Tennessee, to go down eight spots, moving up in the third round and getting another 2024 third-rounder as a result.
That leaves Arizona with Johnson, and six picks in the first two rounds of next year’s draft.
Not bad for Ossenfort’s first swing at this.
