New OL coach Justin Frye fits Cardinals mold like a ‘square peg in a square hole’

TEMPE — It didn’t take long in Justin Frye’s introductory press conference to get a sense of why Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon chose him as the team’s new offensive line coach this offseason.

Right around a minute to be exact.

Even before Frye uttered the words “physical” and “violent” — a pair of JG buzz words — it was clear.

Not hard to see why Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon brought in Justin Frye as the team’s new OL coach: pic.twitter.com/0ONE54UiEf

— Tyler Drake (@Tdrake4sports) February 19, 2025

On top of his feelings on how an offensive line should operate with palpable physicality and violence, his pure love of the game and his resume that includes the 2024 National Championship, his desire to teach stood out just as much, whether it be a college kid or a pro.

“At the end of the day, if they just cut me open and you just lay out who I am and what I’m about, it’s improving the player,” Frye said Wednesday.

Frye comes into his new role riding the wave of winning a national championship at Ohio State and the blur that came with it and his arrival to Arizona.

These past couple of months have been “a blur” for new Cardinals OL coach Justin Frye.

Getting the call from head coach Jonathan Gannon added “an influx of juice.”

“Exciting, nervous, more excitement.” pic.twitter.com/4EGmJU3uSj

— Tyler Drake (@Tdrake4sports) February 19, 2025

As he put it, there was excitement, nervousness and more excitement as the path to the Cardinals opened up. Getting to the next level of the sport isn’t taken lightly.

And that’s a good mentality to have, given the shoes he’s filling after Klayton Adams took the Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator job this offseason.

While Arizona sputtered to the finish line with an 8-9 mark after sitting at 6-4 heading into the bye week, the offensive line under Adams was one of the bright spots.

Even with injuries to multiple starters, the Cardinals running game behind James Conner still averaged 4.6 yards per carry — good enough for eighth in the NFL.

Giving up the fifth-fewest sacks with 30 — Kyler Murray posted his second-lowest sack percentage of his career (5.25%) — says something, too.

For Frye, it’s not about reinventing the O-line wheel already in place, but rather enhancing it.

“Word of the day would probably be excitement. There’s an identity. We knew who we were, what we wanted to do. Now, you come in and you watch and try to critique and you clean up some things that weren’t good. You scratch what itches and then you enhance and supplement what was really good.

“Having an identity of who you are and what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it breeds confidence and confidence breeds success. And you can see that on the tape with kind of the shell game as who was up, who was down, who was injured, who was playing. There was still that identity of what we were going to be and how we were going to do it and they executed at a high level.”

Rejoining of forces

That being said, Arizona’s offensive line could look noticeably different than its 2024 tape.

Three starters are headed toward free agency in right tackle Kelvin Beachum and guards Evan Brown and Will Hernandez. Jonah Williams is coming off an injury-filled year.

There are, however, two names that are sticking around for this year and beyond that Frye knows all too well from his time in the college ranks.

During his time coaching the offensive lines at UCLA (2018-2021) and Ohio State (2022-24), Frye crossed paths with both Paris Johnson Jr. and Jon Gaines II.

In addition to having a couple of familiar faces in the training facility — throw Marvin Harrison Jr. into that mix, too — Frye also plans to utilize the players to better serve the line as a coach.

“I think it’s going to pay dividends in the backend that we don’t know of yet, but good sounding boards especially,” Frye said of the luxury of having the already established relationships. “I had the opportunity to do that as a college coach reaching out to a bunch of guys that I put in professional football.

“Now being in the room with those guys, there’ll be something that’ll pop up or something where it’s a great sounding board to go right to your guy that’s playing and say, ‘Hey, thinking about doing this, we’ve done this in the past. I’ve changed it a little bit. How’s that going to fit here?’ And they maybe go, ‘Coach, that would be great. We need that back’ or ‘Coach, that’s not so good and here’s why. Having a good relationship to communicate that way with them will be beneficial.”

Justin Frye’s appeal to the Cardinals

Landing an NFL job and reuniting with a few familiar faces is appealing in their own rights.

Seeing how Gannon operates and the culture he’s built only solidified Frye’s move was the right one.

“In the football business just whether it’s whatever level you got there’s communication and you get a sense and a feel for people. I think we latched on and I latched onto what he’s about as a man, as a figure head of the organization and ultimately running the football program.

“To be able to hop on and get going and keep going with them, there was a real comfort there with that. … Then knowing that fit was a square peg in a square hole and not vice versa. The excitement of that really played into it.”

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