The Arizona Cardinals have hired Mike LaFleur as their new head coach the team announced late Saturday afternoon.
LaFleur joins the team after spending 2025 as the offensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams. He and the team came to terms on a 5 year deal to move him over from the NFC West division rivals.
“I couldn’t be more fired up to become the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals and am beyond grateful to (owner) Michael (Bidwill) and (GM) Monti (Ossenfort) for this opportunity,” LaFleur said. “Having competed against them in the NFC so many times in recent years, I know the type of talent and toughness the team has and cannot wait to get to Arizona to hit the ground running.”
The younger brother of current Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur, the soon to be 39 year old has play calling experience from his time with the New York Jets. During his time with the Rams, Sean McVay largely handled play calling duties, however the team was 5th in passing yards, first downs, and touchdowns, 6th in yards and points per game, and 8th in red-zone efficiency.
“In his career, Mike has been around some of the best and brightest coaches in football and has been a key contributor to highly successful teams,” Ossenfort said. “He understands what winning football looks like and what it takes to achieve it. Mike is a strong communicator with a detail-oriented teaching style that has always gotten the best from his players and we are incredibly excited for him to bring that to the Cardinals.”
“We had the opportunity to speak with an outstanding group of candidates during this very thorough process and gathered tremendous insight from each of them,” Bidwill said. “At the end of that process, it was clear that Mike LaFleur possesses all the traits necessary to lead this team to success as its head coach. He is highly intelligent with an exceptionally sharp, creative football mind. Mike is also a dynamic and innovative leader and exactly the type of person we were looking for to guide our team as its head coach.”
LaFleur takes over a Cardinals team that finished 3-14 last season, and will select 3rd overall in the upcoming NFL Draft. He becomes the 4th offensive coordinator under McVay to become a head coach with another NFL franchise joining Liam Coen (Jaguars), Kevin O’Connell (Vikings) and Matt LaFleur (Packers).
Taking over for the now departed Jonathan Gannon, Lafleur will have some big decisions to make alongside the Cardinals front office. The most glaring of which is what to do with incumbent starting QB Kyler Murray.
Murray scuffled through another injury plagued season in 2025, starting just 5 contests as a result of a nagging foot injury. His future with the club, and according to some reports, professional football as well, is currently murky at best.
But despite the high draft pick, many of the QB prospects that are expected to be available come with question marks of their own. Beyond Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza who is expected to go first overall to the Las Vegas Raiders, opinions vary wildly on the rest of the quarterback class including prospects such as Ty Simpson, Drew Allar, Garrett Nussmeier, and Cade Klubnik.
Whatever the team does with their quarterback situation, they face an uphill battle in 2026 in the ultra-competitive NFC West division which sent 3 teams to the postseason, and one to the Super Bowl this year.
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