Arizona Cardinals GM Steve Keim: Arians is ‘my Coach of the Year’
Dec 23, 2013, 3:39 PM | Updated: 3:46 pm
The Arizona Cardinals did the unthinkable Sunday.
They went into CenturyLink Field in Seattle and beat the Seahawks 17-10 — a feat not accomplished since the San Francisco 49ers did it on Christmas Eve of 2011.
The win was the latest chapter in the story of the 2013 Cardinals — one penned in part by new general manager Steve Keim, who restructured the team’s roster and coaching staff following a wretched 5-11 campaign in 2012.
Monday morning on The Doug and Wolf Show on Arizona Sports 620, Keim deflected a lot of the credit toward first-year head coach Bruce Arians.
“He’s my coach of the year, I can tell you that,” Keim said. “To do what he’s done with so many roster moves — and I’m talking about 191 roster moves since January, playing with 11 new starters out of 22 — and to take guys off the street every week, whether it’s been Teddy Williams or Brittan Golden or Marcus Benard, and to play with those guys and have success with them, he continues to recycle players that we’ve pulled off the street and has had success with them.”
Arians, who won the AP Coach of the Year Award in 2012 for his excellent work on an interim basis with the Indianapolis Colts, figures to be a prime candidate to become the first back-to-back winner since Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins in 1982 and 1983.
“I’d put him up with against anybody because of the amount of moves that we’ve made and the changes we’ve made from a roster standpoint in the offseason.”
