The Arizona Cardinals are hiring former New York Giants assistant Michael Ghobrial as their new special teams coordinator, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport.

The news of the hire comes after Arizona landed on offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett and reportedly expects to retain Nick Rallis as defensive coordinator.

Ghobrial crossed over with new Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur with the New York Jets in 2021-22. Ghobrial remained with the Jets for 2023 and spent the last two seasons with the Giants under coach Brian Daboll as special teams coordinator.

The 38-year-old played college ball at UCLA as a defensive end and got his start in coaching there. He had stops at Syracuse, Colorado Mesa and Tarleton State before spending a year with the Detroit Lions on the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship in 2017.

Ghobrial led special teams units at Hawaii (2018-19) and Washington State (2020) before returning to the NFL as assistant special teams coordinator with the Jets on a staff that included LaFleur and, in his last season there, Hackett.

This season marks the first time in a long time that the Cardinals will have a new special teams coordinator.

Spanning three different coaching staffs, Jeff Rodgers was among the few constants as Arizona’s special teams coordinator. He also added the title of assistant head coach in 2019.

And while the Rodgers-led unit found some success during his tenure, that wasn’t the case in 2025.

Similar to the downturn seen by the offense and defense, special teams was far from a well-oiled machine due to poor play and injuries that seemed to crop up just about every week.

The Cardinals struggled mightily covering kicks, posting a 28.7-yard average across 51 returns. The Atlanta Falcons were the only team with a worse average (30 yards).

Punting-wise, Arizona recorded the eighth-lowest percentage of punts inside the 20-yard line (34.5%). There were moving parts at the position, too.

Blake Gillikin started the year before going down with a back injury. That left Pat O’Donnell and, later, Matt Haack to pick up the slack midseason.

Kicker Chad Ryland took a step back, too, posting the fifth-worst field goal percentage in the league at 75.8% after seeing a career high (87.5%) the year prior.