Arizona Cardinals vets done with remote offseason work

During his first offseason coaching in the NFL, Arizona Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury spent mini-camps and OTAs cherishing any time on the field and in the office to learn and adapt.

A year later, in a comfort zone and with so many key players returning, he’s apparently gotten enough accomplished to wrap the coronavirus-caused virtual offseason period for most of his team.

Kingsbury told veterans their virtual offseason ended on Friday even though the NFL extended the remote offseason through most of June, reports NFL Networks’ Ian Rapoport. Cardinals tackle D.J. Humphries confirmed Monday to reporters that veterans were done with remote meetings.

With no live practices and no tape to review from those practices, there was not much to rehash after installs, the left tackle said on a Zoom call.

“When you don’t have that (practice) footage of two hours every day … it’s a lot of quizzes. It’s a lot of tests and pop quizzes,” Humphries said. “Boy is it hard to cheat when you have the camera on your face.”

Though there would be no in-person work allowed as NFL teams remain cautious about returning amid the pandemic, the league is allowing teams to hold virtual meetings through June 26, NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported last week.

It appears that the Cardinals will continue to use that time to keep rookies on a learning curve as close to the start of camp — whenever that is — as possible.

On June 8, Kingsbury said on a Zoom call with reporters that the virtual meetings had covered about as much as he thought they could.

“I think we’re running out of ideas without taking it to the field and actually executing it,” he said. “You can only cover so many things without actually practicing it and I think we’ve about reached that point.”

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