Injuries cannot be an excuse in the NFL. That's a cliché and it holds truth.

But the Cardinals were crushed by injuries in 2025 too, and that's simply a fact -- and now backed by analysis.

Aaron Schatz of ftnfantasy.com and a long-time number cruncher on all things NFL has a metric called Adjusted Games Lost. And he posted an article that said the Cardinals ended up with 179.8 AGL, behind only the 2021 Baltimore Ravens (180.2) as the highest number he had measured.

(AGL measures how often starters or other key players are either missing games or playing at less than 100 percent.)

That's on top of the fact the Cardinals played in a division that featured two teams (the Seahawks and Rams) that recorded two of the the top DVOA rankings ever. (DVOA is Defense-adjusted Value Over Average, or a way to give weight to a team's performance despite varying opponents). The Cardinals played the most difficult schedule in the league based on DVOA.

But back to the injuries.

Schatz has done the measurements back through 2001. Interestingly, the Cardinals were so banged up that the distance between them and the No. 31 team -- the Lions -- was bigger than the Lions and the No. 19 Saints.

Some of it will be subjective, but not much. Anyone who watched the Cardinals season play out could see how injuries helped turn things sideways.