Arizona Cardinals hire ‘a great leader’ in Steve Wilks

TEMPE, Ariz. – Once again, the Arizona Cardinals waited. And waited. And then waited some more.

But, in the end, they hired whom team president Michael Bidwill called, “a great leader.” And that, first and foremost, was what Bidwill and general manager Steve Keim set out to find in their new head coach, regardless the time it took.

The person they found was Steve Wilks.

“Not just a leader with a high football IQ, but also a high football EQ (emotional quotient). He just doesn’t coach football players, he coaches people,” Bidwill said. “He knows where the players are 15 minutes after they walk into the training facility and makes sure where they are as people, because they aren’t going to be ready to learn and be well-coached if they’ve got any issues outside of the organization.”

Bidwill added Wilks, who spent the past six seasons with the Carolina Panthers, is quick to adapt how he coaches each individual player. Some may need to be pushed more than others. Some are self-motivated, and perhaps a hands-off approach is better.

It’s certainly not an easy task to reach an entire 90-man roster, but the Cardinals believe they found that unique individual who can be a leader of men, which is so vital in the National Football League.

“Across the board,” Bidwill said Tuesday, “his players at all the teams he’s coached at in the NFL, not only did we seek their input but many of them — unsolicited — reached out to us to tell us what a great coach he is. He’s a terrific communicator, which is a key part of being a terrific leader.”

The decision to hire Wilks was made on Saturday, Bidwill said, following a second interview.

And though Wilks has never been an NFL head coach, he’s been in the league for 12 years with a pair of Super Bowl appearances on his resume.

Wilks checks all the boxes Bidwill laid out when Bruce Arians announced his retirement on Jan. 1.

The Cardinals wanted 1) a great leader, 2) someone with a track record of success and 3) “continue this great culture of accountability that’s been around this organization for a number of years thanks to Coach Bruce Arians,” Bidwill said.

The Cardinals were the last of the seven teams with head coaching vacancies to target an individual, just as they were five years earlier when they named Arians, who ended his tenure as the winningest head coach in franchise history.

It was a three-week search, one that included “thousands and thousands of miles” of travel and “hundreds of hours worth of interviews, conversations, text messages (and) emails,” Bidwill said.

In total, nine candidates were interviewed.

The Cardinals “cast a wide net” according to Keim, and they caught Wilks.

“From Day 1, his infectious personality, his passion for the game, his ability to relate to players (and) on top of that, his ability to hold players accountable,” Keim said.

“In the coaching ranks, you can become a better coach through experience but to have leadership, to me, there’s an innate part of that; and when you get to know Steve Wilks, you can tell that he has that innate leadership skill that very few people have.”

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