NFL Draft analyst has high hopes for Arizona Cardinals starter entering his second season
A top-10 pick in the NFL Draft not only has to play well as a rookie, he needs to be even better in the years that follow.
Arizona Cardinals offensive tackle Paris Johnson Jr. is on his way to checking both boxes.
The sixth overall pick from the 2023 draft played a full season at right tackle for the Cardinals, and A to Z Sports NFL Draft analyst James Foster saw enough to feel great about what’s yet to come from him.
“Paris Johnson Jr. is probably the one that I feel most optimistic about their upside,” Foster said in a recent episode of The Football Room. “Because if we’re just purely judging their output and what they were able to do as rookies I think Darnell Wright’s tape was a little bit cleaner. Paris Johnson Jr. had some losses, some more rough moments, but the upside that he showed as far as movement skills, there’s no one I think in this class that gets depth in their past sets as effortlessly as Paris Johnson Jr. He’s got 36 Something inch arms, but unlike a lot of those longer tackles that we see he’s actually pretty good with his hands.”
“I don’t think the Cardinals are regretting that decision. And he also, I think, had his best performances it felt like back-to-back-to-back the last four to five weeks of the season.”
Foster grades the pick as a B following one year since it happened, but with the Cards primed to take a leap with Johnson as a foundational starter in the offense, that grade may end up getting a bump a couple years down the road.
Arizona reunited Johnson with his former Ohio State teammate Marvin Harrison Jr. at wide receiver to further lift the offense’s ceiling.
Harrison will make quarterback Kyler Murray’s job easier, which will in turn make Johnson look even better at tackle. Both picks were made with improving the franchise QB in mind.
It’s all shaping up for Johnson to further prove why he was drafted as high as he was last year.
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