The players are coming back to the building next week – voluntarily, of course – as the Cardinals begin their offseason program under first-year head coach Mike LaFleur.
They will have a new head strength and conditioning coach to meet them, although he is a familiar face after Kyle Sammons earned the promotion to the lead role.
The Cardinals start on April 7 at the Dignity Health Training Center.
Sammons has been with the Cardinals since 2023 as a strength and conditioning assistant and the sports science coordinator.
The Cardinals also kept on Shea Thompson as director, football performance as well as Buddy Morris as senior reconditioning coordinator.
The team made three hires for the department: Matt King and Rich Pruett, both of whom are assistant strength and conditioning coaches, and Aaron Sanchez as assistant strength and conditioning/reconditioning.
The changes in the department come after the team was "looking at everything,' GM Monti Ossenfort said at the Scouting Combine, when it came to player health. The Cardinals suffered more injury impact in 2025 than any NFL team but one since the 2001 season.
"It's tough when you acquire players and try to build a team and then for whatever reason they're not out there," Ossenfort said. "There are two things that suck about life in the NFL, and that's injuries and losing. Unfortunately, we suffered a lot of both last year.
"We have to find a way to overcome that, we have to find a better way to take care of them, to train them, so they can remain on the field. That has been a huge emphasis."
The Cardinals get a head start on the offseason work by two weeks because it is LaFleur's first season. But the conversations about roster health have been constant since LaFleur arrived and that won't change.
"There are plenty of guys probably getting that question right now (among NFL coaches.)," LaFleur said. "We have a process that we will go about in terms of how we feel will help these guys get prepared.
"Some of it is, are they overtraining? Are they undertraining? Where is that fine balance? Are they getting enough competitive work? Is a joint practice different than a normal practice, because your juices get pumped up. There are great stats about playing in the preseason, not playing in the preseason. That is a fluid conversation."
