Closer Understanding of Drew Petzing’s Offense

What are Drew Petzing’s priorities and 2025 goals?

Entering year three of Drew Petzing’s command of the Arizona Cardinals offense, it may be helpful to add greater clarification as to what Petzing’s priorities are.

Scheme Priorities:

1. Run the football, preferably out of 12 (1 RB, 2 TEs) and 13 1 RB, 3 TEs) personnel.
2. Run a steady diet of RPOs and play action passes.
3. Run mostly 11 personnel spread-type of formation on passing downs.

Personnel Priorities every year (beyond QB):

1. OL
2. RB
3. TE
4. WR

2024 Touches:

1. 283 —- RB James Conner
2. 112 —- TE Trey McBride
3. 78 —- QB Kyler Murray
4. 69 —- RB Trey Benson
5. 62 —- WR Marvin Harrison Jr.
6. 48 —- WR Michael Wilson
7. 46 —- RB Michael Carter
8. 42 —- WR Greg Dortch
9. 40 —- RB Emari Demercado
10. 20 —- TE Elijah Higgins

Cardinals’ 2024 Pass/Run Percentages:

1. 543 Pass —- 53.8% —-20th highest
2. 463 Run —- 46.2% —- 13th highest

Where Drew Petzing wants his offense to be in 2025:

Among the top 5 in run percentage:

1. PHI —- 59.4%
2. BAL —- 53.8%
3. PIT —- 52.1%
4. GB —- 52.1%
5. WAS —- 50.9%

Note: All 5 of these teams made the playoffs. 2 (PHI and WAS) played in the NFC Championship Game and 1 (PHI) was the Super Bowl winner.

Why is running the football more in vogue in the NFL these days?

1. Ball control wears down the opponents’ defense, while it is able to give the team’s own defense ample time to rest between possessions.
2. Today’s linebackers tend to be on the smaller, faster side that those in the past, because of defenses understanding of how critical it is to have linebackers who are effective in pass coverage. It is extremely difficult to win if the opposing offense is exploiting the defense, particularly in the rushing and passing games over the middle of the field.
3. It puts less wear and tear on the team’s QB, particularly now that it takes 20-21 games for a team to win the Super Bowl.

Why and how the Cardinals’ offense was somewhat off track in 2024:

1. Injuries to Will Hernandez and Jonah Williams. Both Hernandez and Williams played very well when healthy.
2. Marvin Harrison Jr., as talented a pass catcher as he is and, as insistent the fans were about wanting the team to tank for him, was not the best system fit available to the Cardinals at pick #4. y.
3. From week to week there was added pressure on Kyler Murray to feed the ball to Marvin Harrison Jr. In retrospect, it was a mistake and an aberration of the offense to target MHJ 116 times for a completion percentage of 53.4%.
4. If one takes out MHJ’s targets and catches, Kyler Murray’s completion percentage would have been 72.9%. In fact, 3 Cardinals made the NFL’s 2024 Top 100...