Josh WeinfussFeb 13, 2026, 06:00 AM ET
CloseJosh Weinfuss is a staff writer who covers the Arizona Cardinals and the NFL at ESPN. Josh has covered the Cardinals since 2012, joining ESPN in 2013. He is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America and a graduate of Indiana University.
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TEMPE, Ariz. — The last offensive play that new Arizona Cardinals coach Mike LaFleur called as a primary playcaller was one to forget.
It was on the last play of the season in 2022, when he was the New York Jets‘ offensive coordinator. New York was down 9-6 with 5 seconds to play and faced third-and-10 from its own 25-yard line. Joe Flacco, the Jets’ fourth and final quarterback of the season, had already missed two deep passes to wide receiver Garrett Wilson and with one play left, he hit Wilson in the left flat. What ensued was a comedy of errors.
Wilson lateraled to Flacco, who lateraled to Elijah Moore, who then tried his own lateral but the ball ended up fumbling out of the end zone after time expired, giving the Dolphins a safety and putting a cap on the Jets season.
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LaFleur was fired three days later. But that didn’t dampen his desire to call plays again.
He’ll return to calling plays full time this season as the Cardinals’ head coach, and he’s looking forward to it “a lot.”
“I missed it,” LaFleur said. “There’s something about calling plays, you’re just kind of in it.”
He had a few opportunities to practice his playcalling during the last three years as the offensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams. Rams coach Sean McVay handed LaFleur the reins in Week 18 of the 2023 and 2024 seasons, and in Week 14 this year against, coincidentally, the Cardinals in Arizona when McVay was sick.
In between those three games, LaFleur had a front-row seat to study how McVay handled and balanced his roles as the head coach and playcaller. Now, in his new role as the Cardinals’ head coach, LaFleur can take everything he learned and put it into practice.
In particular, LaFleur learned from McVay how to talk to a quarterback.
“There’s a tone at which you talk of that quarterback, as well,” LaFleur said. “I really believe that what they’re hearing in that moment … it’s so hard to play quarterback this league, and obviously he has the harder job as the quarterback compared to the playcaller, but you are in it with him and it’s an aspect of football that I missed a lot.
“So, [as with] anything else, it’ll be challenging, but it’ll be really fun.”
Arizona Cardinals new head coach Mike LaFleur acknowledges the media after being introduced last week. Rick Scuteri/AP
McVay had a saying that LaFleur embraced: The worst playcall is the late playcall. The Rams goal was to get the playcall into the quarterback as soon as possible to let Matthew Stafford get to work.
Even during his four seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, LaFleur said he admired how clean and crisp the Rams were pre-snap, and that’s something he wants to instill in Arizona.
“I’m so fully invested in that portion of it,” LaFleur said. “Everyone’s got good plays in my opinion. Everyone has a good scheme, but it’s really leading up to that moment, how clean do we get out of that huddle? How do we operate? How fast do I get that call in there to allow these players to go do what they do best?
“And I think that’s something that we even just got better at in the last few years, particularly this last year. And that’s something definitely that we’ll implement as we get this thing going.”
If LaFleur has any questions about handing his two main duties with the Cardinals and McVay isn’t picking up — or doesn’t want to since he’s now a rival — LaFleur has another option: his brother. Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur calls the offensive plays while also acting as the head coach.
Matt, who attended Mike’s introductory news conference, said “there’s a little but more added to it,” when a head coach is also calling plays, but added that it helps when a playcalling head coach surrounds himself with the right people.
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“Obviously, the coordinators are going to be critical,” Matt LaFleur said. “You better get yourself a good game management guy because [there are] a lot of thoughts that are going through your head throughout the course of a game.”
Even though he’s Mike’s brother, Matt said he was impressed with Mike’s ability to maximize the quarterbacks he had with the Jets. In Mike’s two years in New York, he had five quarterbacks take snaps and three start in 2021 and 2022. In 2022, alone, Mike had three quarterbacks — Zach Wilson, Mike White and Flacco — each throw for at least 1,000 yards.
How LaFleur handled the playcalling with as much roster turnover as he dealt with was part of what stood out to Cardinals general manager Monti Ossenfort about LaFleur.
“I’d say the way we viewed Mike’s time in New York was a positive,” Ossenfort said. “Mike had his hand in walking into a tough situation and the Jets ran some tough things to deal with, and I think that is always beneficial when you can see different things in the building. It was his first chance to call it full time, and I think that was a positive yet probably didn’t go the way Mike wanted it to go, but it was a learning experience.
“The way he talked us through that and what he gained from that and how we improved from that was something that we really looked on as something that’s beneficial.”