Paris Johnson Jr. tore his left biceps in Arizona’s 36-24 loss at the Giants on Sunday. He needs surgery and is going on season-ending injured reserve. The Cardinals are 1-3 and will replace their starting left tackle with a seventh-round rookie.
The way it happened is almost worse than the result. On the final drive, with Arizona holding a first down at the New York 4, Giants edge rusher Abdul Carter beat Johnson. Johnson grabbed his left arm trying to recover. That was it.
Jayden Williams is now the left tackle
Williams is a rookie seventh-round pick. Josh Fryar is the depth behind him. Arizona also signed veteran tackle Jedrick Wills for cover, which tells you how thin the room was before this.
Mike LaFleur, in his first year as a head coach after Jonathan Gannon was fired, kept his public reaction short. “I feel for him,” LaFleur said. “It’s NFL football. Here we are in October. Show goes on.”
That is the correct thing to say and a grim thing to hear if you are Arizona’s quarterback.
The contract timing could not be worse
Arizona picked up Johnson’s fifth-year option this spring. General manager Monti Ossenfort had been fielding extension questions about him. Those conversations are now suspended until a 2023 first-round pick comes back from biceps surgery and proves he is the same player.
Exact figures on the option and any extension framework have not been reported, so nobody outside the building knows what Arizona was willing to pay before Sunday. What is clear is that the leverage shifted, and not in Johnson’s favor.
This is a pattern, not an incident
Arizona is 1-3 with a first-year head coach, a receiver situation that has produced Marvin Harrison Jr. trade speculation, and now a left tackle on injured reserve. Josh Sweat, signed to rush the passer, has one sack in four games after recording 12 in 2025 and has turned up on trade-block lists with $23.6 million cap hits in each of the next two years and no guaranteed money after 2026.
The roster that LaFleur inherited is not deep enough to absorb a left tackle injury. Teams with real depth sign a veteran in August. Arizona signed one in October, after the injury, which is how you end up with a seventh-rounder protecting the blind side in a division game.
What to actually watch
Williams’ first full start is the thing. If he holds up reasonably, Arizona can survive the rest of a season that was unlikely to go anywhere. If he does not, the Cardinals become a team whose quarterback takes hits for three months while the front office fields calls on everyone worth a pick.
Ossenfort said in August that there were no plans to trade Sweat. Teams at 1-3 with an injured left tackle revisit those positions in late October. The trade deadline is 4 p.m. ET on November 10.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.