Arizona Cardinals linebacker Jordan Hicks played for the Philadelphia Eagles when they won the Super Bowl after the 2017 season. He sees some parallels between that Eagles team and the Cardinals.
Philly won seven games the season before and then went 13-3 en route to a championship.
“It’s eerily similar of a situation that we’re going into,” Hicks said in a video conference call with the media on Thursday. “The year before I won the Super Bowl in Philadelphia, we had a rookie head coach and rookie quarterback. We had our highs and our lows. As a defense, we didn’t know what our identity was. Very similar, but we got better as the season went along, very similar to what you saw with us this last season.”
For the Eagles, it was coach Doug Pederson and quarterback Carson Wentz. For the Cardinals, Kliff Kingsbury was in his first season as an NFL head coach and Kyler Murray was the first overall pick like Wentz was in 2016.
The Eagles figured things out defensively. The Cardinals improved over the final month of the season defensively.
They rode the momentum of winning close games and then their confidence grew.
Hicks isn’t anywhere close to predicting a Super Bowl win for the Cardinals. He just sees the similarities.
“It doesn’t just happen,” he said. “You have to will it into existence.”
The Cardinals are doing their part in making improvements, trading for DeAndre Hopkins, re-signing Kenyan Drake, Larry Fitzgerald and D.J. Humphries, as well as adding defensive starters Jordan Phillips, Devon Kennard and De’Vondre Campbell.
The additions of Kennard, Campbell and Phillips “improved tremendously” the team’s defensive front seven.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “It’s wild because it gives you that itch to come back and get to work. When you see moves like that, you realize the potential that you have. You realize the excitement. I said it last year, the reason I came here was because you could tell the direction the team was going.”
The team can’t work out together yet but Hicks is rearing to go.
“When you put pieces together that are exciting like that, it’s fun,” he said.
He understands the work and the discipline that its required. He has been part of it.
“There’s a jump and a lot of work that needs to be done between now and Game 1,” he said. “We’re going to be a different team.
“Making additions in the offseason, making big-time moves, showing that we’re trying win now means a lot.”
Hopefully, those moves are the catalysts to better effort, better production and many more wins in 2020.
[vertical-gallery id=434910]
Listen to the latest from Cards Wire’s Jess Root on his podcast, Rise Up, See Red. Subscribe on Apple podcasts or Stitcher Radio.
Ep. 262
[protected-iframe id=”acae2f079be16959d302b76e54165f10-112738498-106269283″ info=”https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/24292498/download.mp3″ ]
Ep. 261
[protected-iframe id=”d86bd5f63d5bb1802434c3656dc196ff-112738498-106269283″ info=”https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/23833732/download.mp3″ ]