Arizona Cardinals: Bruce Arians not happy with wide receivers

Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians is making it known that he’s not happy about his group of wide receivers early this preseason.

If there’s any man in the NFL that isn’t afraid to speak his mind, it’s head coach Bruce Arians. The Arizona Cardinals head coach has a track record of calling players out that he’s not happy with. And quite frankly, he doesn’t care what you think about it.

One of the greatest inside looks into what kind of coach Arians is was Amazon’s All or Nothing series in which a camera crew followed around the Cardinals throughout the 2015 NFL season. From draft day until the end of the regular season, Arians was vocal with his players that didn’t perform, and even with the ones that stole his parking spot — going as far as threatening to cut anyone that did it.

Guess what? He did just that. Lawrence Okoye was a practice squad player that took Arians’ parking spot two summers ago and received a pink slip because of it.

If Arians is willing to cut a player over a parking spot you know damn well he’ll do it if he’s costing his team on the field. That’s exactly what he sees when he looks at the Cardinals receiving corps.

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When asked Arians said this about his receivers, via the Cardinals official Facebook page:

"“I must have been seeing things back in the spring when I said we have 12 guys that could play in the NFL. I think we have two, but we’ll look around and see who’s available”."

That’s a lot of criticism coming from Arians. The group of receivers may look great in Arians’ offense on paper, but they’re obviously not performing up to his expectations. Larry Fitzgerald, a future first-ballot Hall of Famer, is an obvious exception here. Jaron Brown is the other, Arians saying he’s “as good as you can get” when referring to the fifth-year man out of Clemson.

That means players like John Brown, J.J. Nelson, Britain Golden, rookie Chad Williams and others are sitting on the hot seat. That includes Andre Ellington who, once re-signed in the offseason, was said to be making the move to wide receiver this year, but has spent a majority of camp and preseason action in the backfield.

The biggest name out of this group is, without a doubt, John Brown. Just two seasons ago he took the league by storm catching 65 passes for 1,003 yards and seven touchdowns. Since then he’s been battling injuries and has been readily unavailable including this summer.