The Arizona Cardinals lost out on hiring Sean Payton as their next head coach. He is expected to agree to terms on a contract with the Denver Broncos. To do so, the Broncos agreed to trade their 2023 first-round pick and 2024 second-round pick in exchange for the right to sign Payton (Payton retired from coaching after 2021 but is still under contract with the Saints through 2024) and the Saints’ 2024 third-round pick.
Payton was in Arizona for a daylong meeting and interview with the Cardinals last week. He spent hours at the team facility in Tempe.
It was suggested on the Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday that one reason why the Cardinals were unable to land Payton was the state of the team’s practice facility.
Former Cardinals offensive lineman A.Q. Shipley said the building was long overdue for an upgrade and had not changed since Bruce Arians retired as head coach after the 2017 season.
Shipley was with the team from 2015-2019.
That doesn’t tell the story.
The Cardinals’ team facility, weight room and locker room have not changed since Arians left. This is a fact.
However, there were major upgrades before Shipley got there.
The Cardinals opened their practice bubble in 2013. That cost the team $4.2 million.
They expanded the weight room in 2015. Team strength and conditioning coach Buddy Morris called the 9,000-square-foot weight room “the Taj Mahal of weight rooms in the NFL.” It nearly doubled the size of the weight room previously.
That same offseason, they upgraded the locker room, added a cafeteria and a hydrotherapy area. They redid meeting rooms. They expanded the facility by 92,000 square feet and invested more than $15 million into the facility. It was considered a front-of-the-line facility at the time.
That was less than 10 years ago.
Shipley is right. Nothing has been changed since Arians left.
That is because things were upgraded before Shipley got there.
McAfee criticized the Cardinals because the team meeting room was the same place as the media conference room.
That is also not completely accurate.
The team meeting room is an auditorium that is rarely used for press conferences.
The media conference room is a different, smaller area.
Payton didn’t get hired by the Cardinals either because he liked the Broncos’ situation better and because Denver was willing to give up the draft capital necessary to the Saints to hire him.
It wasn’t because Payton thought the Cardinals’ facilities were subpar.
The Cardinals have been in the same building since the 1990s and the outside of the building looks like it. However, everything inside is much different.
For Shipley, who spent several seasons with the team, to suggest that things were old and outdated, is simply incorrect.
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