The Arizona Cardinals have lost 11 of their past 12 games, including six straight. They've gone from consistently suffering last-second heartbreak to digging themselves multi-score holes and allowing 40-plus points in four games during their current skid.
Just as Arizona's season has unraveled, so has its defense. The Cardinals have the worst Pro Football Focus tackling grade in the NFL at the moment, as the third year of the Jonathan Gannon rebuild nears its end.
Gannon isn't quick to expound on many topics in his news conferences, but he had plenty to say about the league's rules regarding tackling in practice when asked about them Wednesday.
"How the rules are set up, it's hard to get better as a tackler being in the NFL," Gannon said.
Teams are allowed just 14 padded practices, according to the NFL's 2020 collective bargaining agreement, but 11 of them have to occur during the first 11 weeks of the season,as reported by ESPN.
During the offseason, contact is prohibited. That includes OTAs and minicamp.
"That's one of the top skills of any defensive player," Gannon said of tackling. "There's no drill you can do that can mimic a game. There's not. It's too chaotic of an environment to drill it.
"So a lot of ways that you can try to do it, but you just got to keep harping on the fundamentals, the details of it. We try to obviously have language that we use that keeps it simple in their head, but I always think you got to tackle better. But it's hard."
A reporter chimed in asking if Gannon would like to see the rules changed.
"The rules are the rules," he said.
The reporter followed up, suggesting that Gannon could lobby for them to be changed.
"Yeah, I'm not going to lobby for anything. I just play by the rules," he said.
But before another question could be asked, Gannon sprinkled in some more of his thoughts.
"It'd be like, 'Hey, Scottie Scheffler, it's your offseason, don't hit a wedge,'" Gannon said.
"You know what I mean? But like I said, it's set up how it's set up, that's fine. But to get better at a skill, you have to practice the skill. You practice the skill. ... You can scale the tempo, you can scale how you do it, but to practice a skill, you need to practice the skill. And so it's a conundrum I think all defensive guys face, and there's risk-reward to trying to practice it with however you set things up. But you definitely have to be a good tackling defense to play good defense."
No NFL player has forced more missed tackles on the ground this season than Atlanta Falcons running back Bijan Robinson. He's made defenders miss 70 times in 14 games, according to PFF.
Robinson should be licking his chops because he's about to face the Cardinals' reeling and injury-riddled defense that was just gashed by the Houston Texans.
The Cardinals defense ranks 27th against the run, per DVOA.With second and third-level defense like this, it's easy to see why.pic.twitter.com/tSgvMbS9aS
— Theo Mackie (@theo_mackie)December 16, 2025
"Yeah, he's special," Gannon said of Robinson Wednesday.
"You're watching games, and it seems like it's a highlight reel. ... He's one of the best ones out there. I don't compare players, but this would be one of the better ones we face in the run and pass game."
Arizona committed to beefing up its run defense this past offseason. The Cardinals drafted defensive tackle Walter Nolen III with the No. 16 overall pick. They signed veterans Dalvin Tomlinson and Calais Campbell to bolster the interior, and they brought up aboard standout edge Josh Sweat, who was coming off a head-turning Super Bowl performance with the Philadelphia Eagles.
They also drafted defensive end Jordan Burch in the third round and had defensive tackle Darius Robinson, whom they picked No. 27 overall in 2024, ready to go for a healthier Year 2.
But the injury bug came back around for some of those players as well as for others on a defense that's fallen far short of expectations in a competitive NFC West that features three conference contenders. Constant turnover across the unit and disconnected play has partly led to Arizona actually ranking slightly worse against the run this season (21st with 124.5 rushing yards allowed per game) than it did last season (20th with 126.4 rushing yards allowed per game).
Then there's the tackling issues that have affected the Cardinals, both in their defense of the ground and the air.
They've been more noticeable when Arizona has been trying to limit opposing run games. After all, the Cardinals are giving up the fifth-most yards after contact per rushing attempt (3.31) in the NFL this season, per Next Gen Stats.
Gannon said the league's tackling rules come up every year among head coaches and defensive coaches.
"A lot of people think you can't practice it, [and that] you better just acquire people that can tackle because you ain't going to help 'em at all," Gannon said. "That's a thought process, too.
"To each their own. But it's a challenge."
