Feb. 16, 2026, 9:22 p.m. MT<\/p>\n
The Miami Dolphins<\/a> began what many teams will be doing throughout the offseason, especially leading up to the new league year. They will be making player cuts for financial and football reasons.<\/p>\n The Arizona Cardinals<\/a> have many cut candidates, but only one would really be considered notable. NFL.com’s Matt Okada picked out one notable candidate<\/a> to be cut this offseason.<\/p>\n For the Cardinals, it is running back James Conner.<\/p>\n Conner missed the vast majority of 2025 with an ankle injury, but even before the injury, he was averaging just 3 yards per carry and had one explosive run in three games for a 3.1% explosive run rate, lowest of his career by far. Like Kamara and Jones, Conner frees up significant cap space ($7.5 million) if released this offseason, and while the Cardinals are in much better shape than the Saints<\/a> or Vikings<\/a>, they have a ton of holes to fill under new head coach Mike LaFleur. They\u2019re also likely to move on from Kyler Murray, and it makes sense to start relatively fresh across the Arizona backfield. The Cardinals don\u2019t have a superb successor lined up, but the combination of Conner’s age (turning 31 in May), production and contract makes this an easy call.<\/p>\n This would be less certain had Jonathan Gannon still been head coach. But with a new coach in LaFleur, As important as Conner has been for the play on the field and in the locker room, things are going to change. His age and his injury from last season make him less reliable.<\/p>\n Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a><\/p>\n It is the sad reality, and the truth is he didn’t look as good last season even before the injury. The Cardinals need to remake the running back room, and that likely means no more Conner.<\/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":"Feb. 16, 2026, 9:22 p.m. MT The Miami Dolphins began what many teams will be doing throughout the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[95878,375,390,2604,1327,7,6,95973,95974,98748,95882,95890,101172,96065,95951,95988,95896,96129,95888,95895,95899,95883,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-757876","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-tagalvin-kamara","18":"tag-tagamerican-football","19":"tag-tagarizona-cardinals","20":"tag-tagjames-conner","21":"tag-tagkyler-murray","22":"tag-tagmiami-dolphins","23":"tag-tagminnesota-vikings","24":"tag-tagnational-sports","25":"tag-tagnew-orleans-saints","26":"tag-tagnfl","27":"tag-tagnfl-hub","28":"tag-tagoverall-neutral","29":"tag-tagsports-news","30":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116085098130564124","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757876","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=757876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}