Updated Jan. 22, 2026, 10:48 p.m. MT<\/p>\n
The Arizona Cardinals<\/a> have had a bit of a pattern in the way they hire new head coaches. Since they moved to Arizona, they have alternated between hiring coaches with significant head-coaching experience and guys doing the job for the first time.<\/p>\n It is uncanny.<\/p>\n Cardinals history hiring head coaches since coming to Arizona<\/p>\n Their first head-coaching hiring in Arizona was in 1990, They fired Gene Stallings in 1989. He previously had been a head coach in the college ranks at Texas A&M.<\/p>\n Joe Bugel replaced him with no experience. It has gone back and forth since then with one excpetion.<\/p>\n Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a>1990 – Joe Bugel, no head-coaching experience1994 – Buddy Ryan, previous NFL head coach1996 – Vince Tobin, no head-coaching experience2001 – Dave McGinnis, was Cardinals’ interim head coach in 2000 for nine games2004 – Dennis Green, previous NFL head coach2007 – Ken Whisenhunt, no head-coaching experience2013 – Bruce Arians, was interim head coach in 2012 for 12 games2018 – Steve Wilks, was a head coach at a D-II school, never in FBS or NFL2019 – Kliff Kingsbury, head-coaching experience in college (FBS)2023 – Jonathan Gannon, no head-coaching experience<\/p>\n That pattern would suggest the Cardinals’ next hire will have been a head coach before.<\/p>\n What does that mean?<\/p>\n Which candidates have head-coaching experience?<\/p>\n The two finalists the Cardinals wanted to interview a second time who were hired elsewhere were previous head coaches.<\/p>\n New Tennessee Titans head coach Robert Saleh was the head coach for the New York Jets previously. New Miami Dolphins<\/a> head coach Jeff Hafley was Boston College’s head coach.<\/p>\n Of the candidates the Cardinals have considered, these are the previous head coaches:<\/p>\n Vance JosephRaheem MorrisArthur SmithMatt Nagy<\/p>\n Does this mean the Cardinals will hire one of these guys? History says so.<\/p>\n Get more Cardinals<\/a> and NFL coverage from Cards<\/a> Wire’s Jess Root and others by listening to the latest on the Rise Up, See Red podcast. Subscribe on Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0YouTube<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Apple podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Updated Jan. 22, 2026, 10:48 p.m. MT The Arizona Cardinals have had a bit of a pattern in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2078],"tags":[95878,375,390,2604,1327,7,6,95973,95974,95882,95890,95951,95896,95888,95895,95899,95975,96099,96008,95884,95883,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-698495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-cardinals","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-arizona-cardinals","11":"tag-arizonacardinals","12":"tag-cardinals","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-sstssportsnflcardinals","16":"tag-sstsncardinals","17":"tag-tagamerican-football","18":"tag-tagarizona-cardinals","19":"tag-tagmiami-dolphins","20":"tag-tagnational-sports","21":"tag-tagnfl","22":"tag-tagnfl-hub","23":"tag-tagoverall-neutral","24":"tag-tagrobert-saleh","25":"tag-tagsec-conference-football","26":"tag-tagsmg-listicle","27":"tag-tagsports-coaching-training","28":"tag-tagsports-news","29":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115943580415514787","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}