I've gotta talk about the Arizona Cardinals for a moment.

I'm a life long Buffalo Bills fan. When the Bills aren't in it, I go with the Eagles because I was born in Philly, and most of my family are Eagles fans.

Still, usually I work across the street from the Cardinals stadium. I keep track of them.

This team isn't just tanking this season. This team is about to become monumentally bad for years to come.

If you doubt for a second that they're tanking, consider this -- they cut DeAndre Hopkins and took a $22 million cap hit this season. Okay. If they had waited three days, per league rules, they could have split that dead cap hit between this season and next season. They made the conscious choice to deprive the team of $11 million worth of talent on the roster this season.

I know that Isaiah Simmons wasn't living up to his draft status; but, trading him for a seventh round pick says something.

Cutting Colt McCoy this close to the regular season leaves them with no quarterback with reps within their offensive system, and no quarterback with time to learn it.

The Cardinals were gonna be bad this year no matter what. They're just trying to make sure that they're bad enough to get the first overall pick. They're just not legally allowed to say it.

It would not surprise me at all if the Cardinals do the dumbest thing in the history of football this next year.

That wouldn't be drafting Caleb Williams with the first overall pick and moving on from Kyler Murray.

That would be repeating what they did with Steve Wilks and firing Jonathan Gannon after one season as head coach.

The Kingsbury hire made little to no sense to begin with; but, the Jags made their own mistake by hiring Urban Meyer, and the Jags are already on their way back up.

If the Cardinals signal to the world that they have a pattern, even as small as two in a row, of hiring a buffer coach to tank for the first pick before throwing the coach under the bus and getting the guy that they really wanted, no competent coach is gonna take that job until ownership changes.

You really only get two chances to be a head coach in the NFL. Everybody who knows football knows that, if Josh McDaniels fails with the Raiders this season, he's an offensive coordinator for the rest of his career.

If and when the Cardinals find themselves in this situation again in a few years, I honestly think that most of the coordinators on contending teams would weigh their options and remain coordinators on their respective teams rather than waste what is possibly their only shot, probably their only shot, and definitely one of their two shots at being a head coach with the Cardinals when they know that it's gonna be a wasted effort.

I've been saying for a while that this team is gonna suck until they get out of Kyler Murray's contract.

It's worse than that.

This team is gonna suck until Bidwell sells the team or dies. They're gonna ruin Caleb Williams if (when) they get the first overall pick this season.

Still, the thing that really grinds my gears is that they actually have to lie about it.

I'm all for legalized gambling, even though I don't partake. I understand why the NFL doesn't like the optics of any team showing that they're trying to lose. I fully support actions taken against the Dolphins (not just because I'm a Bills fan), over allegations that Ross was offering money to Flores to lose games.

But, tanking is a strategy.

My Buffalo Bills weren't out of the playoffs for seventeen straight years because they were the worst team in football. My Buffalo Bills were out of the playoffs for seventeen years because they were middle of the pack. Tanking can be a viable, long-term strategy. Jets fans were recently bitching about the surprise win that cost them Trevor Lawrence.

What the rules have created is a system of lying. We all know that we're being lied to. There are media outlets that are probably serving as propaganda for the Cardinals, who are perpetuating the lie that they're actually trying to win this year. There are hopeful Cardinals fans who want to believe that they're trying to win this year, and that they'll pull off a miracle.

The reality is that they're gonna be the worst team in football because they're trying to be the worst team in football.

They're lying about it because they have to. They're likely to ruin the career of a young man who deserves better.

The reality is that everybody who owns a Cardinals jersey should burn it.

(Due exception to any JJ Watt jersey. He's just an awesome guy.)