The Arizona Cardinals have not done anything yet in the offseason at outside linebacker, which is curious because, as a team, they had only one sack in the final six games of the season. Dennis Gardeck led the team with six sacks.
However, they do have the promise of 2023 rookie BJ Ojulari, their second-round pick last year.
On the other side, they still believe in Zaven Collins, entering his fourth NFL season his second from moving off the ball to the edge as a pass rusher and more.
In his first season at outside linebacker, he played 58% of the defensive snaps, had 41 total tackles and a career-high 3.5 sacks. Those 3.5 sacks came in the first seven games of the season and he didn’t have another.
That lack of production hasn’t caused head coach Jonathan Gannon to waver in his belief in Collins.
“He’s got all the tools he’s shown on tape, he can do everything that we need to do to be a premium player for us,” Gannon said at the annual league meeting in Orlando, according to AZCardinals.com’s Darren Urban. “(He needs) the consistency of doing that every single day. He’s so bright and so smart. But at that position, there’s times where we talk to him about ‘Hey, man, like, you just gotta cut it loose. You can’t overthink this.’”
Collins is entering the final year of his contract and the Cardinals have until May to decide whether to exercise his fifth-year option, that would pay him more than $13 million.
It doesn’t seem likely they will exercise it but if they see him taking a big step forward and becoming a double-digit sack player, maybe they take that risk.
We will see how much they believe in Collins as the offseason progresses, whether or not they add any other established edge help.
