“Zero chance you were getting that answer.”
The first round of the 2024 NFL Draft is just three days away, and naturally, teams are receiving a ton of questions about their plans with their draft pick. But the Arizona Cardinals in particular are playing things very close to the vest in terms of their plans with their top-five pick in the first round.
Arizona has the fourth overall pick in the draft. And with three teams potentially in need of a quarterback ahead of them, the Cardinals could have their choice of any non-quarterback that they would like in the draft.
Cardinals general manager Monti Ossenfort and head coach Jonathan Gannon recently answered questions from the media regarding the team’s draft strategy. And for the most part, neither was all that eager to spill their potential plans.
In particular, the two were asked how many players they had on their draft board and how many were graded by the team as a first-round pick-worthy prospect.
Ossenfort responded with a non-answer, dodging the question entirely for the most part.
“Yeah, we don’t necessarily talk first-round. It’s not really a language we use. We talk about roles and where they fit on our team. In terms of the number of guys that we have on our board, it’s a little bit of a moving target. We have guys that are up there. But I would say there is a focus number that we are more interested in. I wouldn’t say it’s an extensive number. These guys have to check a lot of boxes to be guys that we want to add to our program. So, hard for me to give you a number of that.”
If you really look at what Ossenfort said here, it was a lot of filler words, describing the team’s draft board as a “moving target”.
Jonathan Gannon even joked about it moments after Ossenfort finished talking, saying that there was “zero chance” that the reporter who asked the question was getting a real answer there.
On one hand, it’s understandable for Ossenfort to be hiding the team’s plans from the media. Especially since the team could certainly be in the mix to potentially trade down in the draft with their top pick.
However, what harm can there really be to give the reporter a number of how many players the team is looking at? It’s not like he was asked to name players they were interested in directly.
Regardless, the Cardinals clearly don’t want too much information to get out about their plans. So it should certainly be interesting to see what Ossenfort and company do on Thursday night with their two selections in the first round.