On April 26, 2018, the Cardinals traded the 15th, 79th and 152nd picks in the 2018 draft to move up to No. 10 and draft quarterback Josh Rosen.
On April 25, 2019, the Cardinals traded Rosen to the Dolphins for the 62nd pick in the 2019 draft and a fifth-round pick in the 2020 draft. General Manager Steve Keim made both those moves as well as the decision to draft Kyler Murray first overall on Thursday night, but he said in a press conference that the massive shift in direction didn’t mean the initial choice of Rosen didn’t pan out.
“I don’t know that it wasn’t that he didn’t work out,” Keim said, via ESPN.com. “I would say, obviously, he was put in a tough situation last year. But I think, really, when you come down to the bottom line, is we had an opportunity to find a dynamic player that we think can be special.”
It’s hard to spin anything about the last year for the Cardinals as working out. They drafted a quarterback and hired a head coach in 2018 and then repeated the process in 2019, which is an odd sequence of events for a team that doesn’t believe it was on the wrong track after the initial moves.
