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Well, it’s official. The Arizona Cardinals have drafted running back Jeremiyah Love #3 overall in the 2026 NFL Draft. And I’m sure Arizona fans are fired up — as are a lot of us across the NFL. It’s going to be great to see Love on an NFL field week to week. He’ll bring the springs, the dashes, and yes, those leaps we’ve come to know him for.
But let’s just pump the brakes for a minute.
We’ve seen this movie before. It was just last year. The team was the Las Vegas Raiders. The player was Ashton Jeanty, picked #6 overall. And what we got was not a home run. We got a rookie running back getting bottled up and beat up behind a broken offensive line.
This feels all too familiar.
The ghosts of bad team picks: Different jersey, same path?
Who is Jeremiyah Love? (The Profile)
Before I get into why I don’t love the landing spot, let me be clear — Love is a stud. I don’t want anyone twisting my words. This is a real prospect. Maybe the best running back prospect we’ve seen in years.
Here’s the full profile:
- Height: 6’0″
- Weight: 212 lbs
- 40-yard dash (Combine): 4.36 seconds
- High school 100-meter: 10.76 seconds (Missouri state champion — the man is FAST)
- 2025 stats at Notre Dame: 1,372 rushing yards, 18 TDs, 27 catches for 280 yards, 3 receiving TDs
- Last two seasons combined: 2,497 rushing yards, 6.9 yards per carry in back-to-back seasons, 35 rushing touchdowns
- Awards: Doak Walker Award (nation’s top RB), AP First-Team All-American, finished 3rd in Heisman Trophy voting
- Draft distinction: Highest running back drafted since Saquon Barkley went #2 overall in 2018
- Rookie contract: Roughly $12.5 million AAV — 7th-highest average annual value for any running back in the league
And it’s not just the measurables. NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein compared him to Jahmyr Gibbs. Other analysts have pulled out a Clinton Portis comp — similar frame, similar physicality, similar three-down weapon potential. Love is an electric athlete with fantastic vision, contact balance, and — get this — he’s also a solid pass protector and route runner who lined up in the slot at Notre Dame.
Bell cow. Three-down back. Weapon.
One fair knock on the resume though — he didn’t grind through SEC defenses every single week. Notre Dame is a national brand, and he did play in the College Football Playoff. But outside of those marquee matchups, the weekly competition wasn’t the best the college game has to offer. A small asterisk — not a red flag. The tape is real.
Honestly? I think Love is a better prospect than Ashton Jeanty was coming out of Boise State last year.
Which is exactly why I hate the landing spot.
The Raiders in 2025: A Cautionary Tale
Last year, Las Vegas used the #6 overall pick on Ashton Jeanty. Best running back in the class. Generational college producer. “Can’t-miss” prospect.
Here’s how year one actually went:
- 266 carries, 975 rushing yards, 5 rushing TDs
- 55 catches, 346 receiving yards, 5 receiving TDs
- Over 1,300 scrimmage yards, double-digit touchdowns
On paper? Respectable. A solid rookie line.
But crack open the film and the advanced numbers:
- He averaged under 3 yards per carry for big chunks of the season
- He finished with 807 yards after contact — 83% of his rushing total
- At one point in the season, that number was literally over 100%. Read that again. He was losing yards before contact and making up every single one of them on his own.
That’s not a running back thriving. That’s a running back surviving.
He got bottled up. He got hit way too much. He absorbed a pounding behind a porous offensive line. And the scary part — according to Sports Illustrated’s rookie season review, he actually improved as the season went on. Imagine where those numbers would have been without the late-season surge.
This one’s half a joke — and half a warning.
Different Jersey, Same Checklist
Let’s run the two situations side by side. The parallels are almost too on-the-nose.
Las Vegas Raiders in 2025 (when they drafted Jeanty):
- Bottom-feeder coming off a losing season
- Brand-new coaching staff
- Unsettled quarterback situation
- No real team identity
- Bad offensive line
- Low expectations
Arizona Cardinals in 2026 (who just drafted Love):
- Coming off a 3-14 season
- Brand-new head coach — Mike LaFleur (first year as a head coach, previously an offensive coordinator)
- Unsettled quarterback situation — the team released Kyler Murray this offseason. Starter is currently Jacoby Brissett, with Gardner Minshew as the backup. Neither one is the long-term answer.
- No real team identity
- One of the worst offensive lines in football
- Low expectations in what is arguably the toughest division in the league — the NFC West
Same checklist. Same ingredients. Different jersey.
What else do you want to throw a top-flight running back prospect into?
About That Arizona Offensive Line…
This is where the story gets genuinely alarming.
In 2025, the Cardinals’ offensive line was a disaster. The numbers, per Sharp Football Analysis, are brutal:
- 59 sacks allowed — 5th-most in the entire NFL
- 93.1 rushing yards per game — 31st in the league (only the Raiders were worse… with Ashton Jeanty)
- The team’s most-frequently used O-line combination was on the field for just 23.7% of snaps — 26th in the NFL. Injuries everywhere.
- Arizona’s offensive tackles finished with the lowest run block win rate at the position in the entire NFL last season
Think about that last stat. The Cardinals’ tackles were dead last in run blocking. Then — with the #3 overall pick, with elite tackle prospects like Miami’s Francis Mauigoa sitting right there on the board — GM Monti Ossenfort and head coach Mike LaFleur drafted a running back.
They just handed a generational running back prospect the keys to a car with four flat tires.
This is a recipe for disaster. I’m afraid Love is going to get run down and beat up in his first three or four seasons in the league. And that will be bad for Love. And bad for Arizona.
Please Don’t Dent the Cyber Truck
Look — I know Love is thrilled to go this high. It’s an honor. He probably still believes he’s going to wreck the NFL, and his confidence is sky-high right now. It should be.
But I’m worried that instead of wrecking the league, he’s going to get wrecked.
No, we don’t want to play touch football out here. Football is a contact sport. But we also don’t want to put a bunch of dents in our Cyber Truck. It’s made to look like a tank, but we want to keep this ride smooth. Please don’t touch my baby — I just got her washed.
We want to keep the hands off our first-round running back so he stays healthy, stays fresh, and is still available when the postseason run finally comes around.
And history tells us this matters. Running backs have short careers. They fall off a cliff fast. The wear and tear is real, and guys who absorb a beating early often aren’t the same guys by year four or five. Ask Todd Gurley. Ask Ezekiel Elliott. Ask David Johnson — ironically, a Cardinal himself.
The Economics of the Running Back Position
Here’s another angle that has to be in the conversation: the salary cap.
You don’t want a bunch of money tied up at running back. The position has the shortest shelf life in football. Backs get beat up, and they don’t last long. The average NFL running back career is under three years. Value on the open market has been crashing for over a decade — which is why the Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry second contracts made so much noise this past cycle.
Love’s rookie deal is team-friendly — 4 years, around $9.2 million this season, scaling up to $16.1 million by year four. That’s fine. But the moment you start talking extension for a back who’s just taken 250+ carries a year behind a leaky offensive line? That’s where organizations get into real trouble.
Here’s the smarter blueprint — and it’s how the best front offices actually operate:
- Build the offensive line first.
- Build the defense.
- Find your franchise quarterback.
- Use mid-round and late-round picks on durable, expendable backs who fit what you do.
- THEN — when the team is close, when the line is ready, when you’re one weapon away from a playoff run — that’s when you spend a top-5 pick on a Jeremiyah Love or an Ashton Jeanty.
You plug the weapon in when the machine is ready. You don’t drop a Ferrari engine into a chassis that can’t hold it.
That’s Arizona right now. That was Vegas a year ago.
Booger Was Right
ESPN’s Booger McFarland didn’t like the pick either. I’m with you, Booger.
Love deserves better infrastructure around him. The Cardinals needed to fix the trenches, not add another skill player to watch get clobbered behind them. And the team that needed an offensive tackle with their top-3 pick just drafted a running back instead. The irony is heavy.
To make it even more crowded — Arizona just signed veteran Tyler Allgeier in free agency, restructured James Conner’s deal, and still has 2024 third-round pick Trey Benson on the roster. That’s now four running backs competing for touches in an offense that struggled to run the ball all year.
Something is going to give.
Where Is All of This Going? (The Bigger Picture)
Let’s zoom out for a second, because this matters historically and going forward.
The NFL has been experimenting with taking running backs high again. Here’s the recent sample:
- Saquon Barkley — #2 overall, 2018 (Giants). Considered a disaster for years… until he landed in Philadelphia with a real offensive line and won a Super Bowl.
- Bijan Robinson — #8 overall, 2023 (Falcons). Dynamic producer but has had to carry a rebuilding offense on his back.
- Ashton Jeanty — #6 overall, 2025 (Raiders). We just walked through that story.
- Jeremiyah Love — #3 overall, 2026 (Cardinals). Here we go again.
The pattern is becoming clear. Running backs are getting drafted high again. And when they land on teams that are actually ready to maximize them? They thrive. When they land on rebuilds? They absorb body blows, burn through their prime years behind bad lines, and the organization walks away swearing off running backs in the first round all over again.
I hope I’m wrong about this one. I really do. Love has the talent to be the exception. I want him to break every record in the book. I want the Cardinals to find their quarterback next year, grow the O-line around him, and build a contender.
But I’ve seen this movie too many times to ignore the signs.
Your Turn
What do you think? Is Arizona actually ready to maximize Jeremiyah Love? Or are we watching the Ashton Jeanty story — Part Two?
Drop your take in the comments. And hey — stay healthy, stay strong, and keep the faith. We’ll see if history repeats itself.
🏈 My Peak Performance Stack
Heads up: some of the links below are affiliate links. If you grab something through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I personally use and trust.
Here’s the thing about pro athletes — and honestly, about all of us. You can’t perform at the highest level if your body is breaking down.
Jeremiyah Love is going to need every edge he can get to survive that Cardinals offensive line. The rest of us? We’re out here doing life. Working, parenting, grinding, chasing goals. And the principle is the same: stay at your best. Boost your immune system. Build stamina. Attack inflammation. Recover hard. That’s the formula to keep you on the field — whatever your field looks like — feeling your best at peak performance.
These are my top supplement recommendations. The stack that keeps me feeling great at almost 50.
🥇 All in One Master Tonic — 13oz
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🥇 All in One Master Tonic — 64oz
For the whole family, or for those of us who already know what this stuff does. Same powerhouse formula, bigger bottle, better value per ounce. 👉 Get the 64oz bottle on Amazon
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🥇 Isotonix OPC-3
One of the most powerful antioxidant supplement blends on the market. Attacks free radical damage and inflammation at the source — and because it’s isotonic, your body actually absorbs it. Circulation, recovery, cardiovascular support. A must-have in my daily stack. 👉 Check out OPC-3 here
🥇 Relaxium SleepQuick Gummies
Recovery is where the growth happens. Ask any NFL running back — the body rebuilds while you sleep. These gummies bring 5 mg of melatonin, Vitamin D-3, and a prebiotic + probiotic blend for gut health and immune support. Gluten-free, drug-free, lemon flavor. 60 gummies per bottle. (Add your preferred purchase link here)
Stay healthy. Stay strong. Keep the faith. — 7 Super Life Club
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