March 26, 2026, 5:56 p.m. MT<\/p>\n
The Arizona Cardinals are deep into their player evaluations for the 2026 NFL draft. Part of that process was having formal interviews with a number of prospects at NFL combine at the beginning of the month.<\/p>\n
We know one of the players they met with \u2014 Cincinnati linebacker Jake Golday.<\/p>\n
Golday, speaking with SI.com’s Justin Melo<\/a>, revealed that he had a “bunch of formals” at the combine, and that list of teams included the Arizona Cardinals.<\/p>\n The Cardinals could use help at linebacker. Mack Wilson is entering the final year of his contract, Owen Pappoe enters the final year of his, and 2025 rookie Cody Simon’s time on the field as a starter resulted in an 0-9 record with six games allowing over 30 points.<\/p>\n Golday is Melo’s third-ranked linebacker<\/a> in the draft.<\/p>\n Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a><\/p>\n He converted from the edge to off the ball. He is 6-4 1\/2 and 239 pounds and ran the 40 at the combine in 4.62 seconds. He had 105 total tackles in 2025 and had 3.5 sacks, six tackles for loss, three pass breakups and a forced fumble.<\/p>\n He is likely a Day 2-3 player, and that is right in the range where the Cardinals could afford to get a linebacker.<\/p>\n As the draft approaches, keep an eye on Golday and what is said about him.<\/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":"March 26, 2026, 5:56 p.m. MT The Arizona Cardinals are deep into their player evaluations for the 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[95878,375,390,2604,1327,7,6,95973,95974,95882,95896,95888,95906,109540,96716,95883,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-836175","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-tagnational-sports","19":"tag-tagnfl","20":"tag-tagoverall-positive","21":"tag-tagowen-pappoe","22":"tag-tagsports-illustrated","23":"tag-tagsports-news","24":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116299335580282896","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836175","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=836175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}