GLENDALE, Ariz. – Jeremiyah Love lined up in the first-team backfield when the Arizona Cardinals broke their opening huddle of training camp Thursday. James Conner, the back who has been the Cardinals’ offensive foundation for three seasons, was not there. His surgically repaired foot kept him to individual work on the sideline, and the first-team snaps fell to the rookie instead.
Arizona’s summer started differently than anyone planned.
Love, Arizona’s first-round running back out of Notre Dame, was always going to be a significant piece of the Cardinals’ 2026 offense. The franchise used a premium draft pick on him because his athletic profile was too compelling to pass up: a short, explosive first step, reliable hands out of the backfield, and the vision in traffic that allows him to hit the crease before linebackers can redirect. The expectation was a deliberate integration: some early reps with the first unit, increasing volume as camp progressed, the gradual workload a rookie absorbs when a seasoned veteran is still shouldering the starter’s share. That plan dissolved when Conner could not join team drills.
Conner underwent foot surgery at the end of the 2025 season and has not yet been cleared for full contact work. Head coach Mike LaFleur declined to offer a specific timeline for Conner’s return to team drills after Thursday’s session, which is itself a kind of answer. Coaches who have confident dates tend to share them.
Tyler Allgeier has stepped into the opening left by Conner’s absence, collecting the majority of first-team reps through Thursday’s practice. Allgeier signed a two-year, $12.25 million extension with Arizona this offseason, a contract that positioned him as a capable fallback option if the starting role became available. He averages 4.3 yards per carry over his career, protects the ball, and arrived at camp in shape. But he has never been a featured back in an NFL offense, and no one inside the Cardinals’ building is treating him as one now. He is a bridge. Love is the destination.
How ready Love is to reach it is the central question of Arizona’s camp. He drew consistent attention through Thursday’s session. The first step off his initial motion is the trait that keeps getting mentioned: a burst that splits the gap before defenders have finished reading the play. He has also taken on pass-protection assignments earlier than most rookies typically manage, working through defensive assignment rules that many first-year backs spend half a season absorbing. Those details matter more in 2026 than they might in another year. Quarterbacks who cannot trust their backs to identify blitzes keep them off the field in passing situations, and Arizona is going to be in a lot of passing situations.
The arithmetic behind that reality is uncomfortable. Arizona enters the season carrying what analysis identified months ago as the hardest schedule in the NFL, a projection that became more daunting when the Los Angeles Rams acquired Myles Garrett from Cleveland last month. The Cardinals will see the two-time Defensive Player of the Year twice a year now, inside a division where their offensive line was already a liability against elite pass-rushers. The quarterback behind that line is Jacoby Brissett, Arizona’s projected Week 1 starter after Kyler Murray’s departure to Minnesota. Brissett is a careful, competent operator who manages games rather than transforming them. His best outcomes depend on the run game establishing enough early-down credibility to make his reads simpler.
That dependency runs through Love and Allgeier. Marvin Harrison Jr. is on the roster and capable of making any defense pay for a coverage mistake, but Harrison is a game-changer in specific situations, not a corrective for a backfield that cannot earn four yards on first down. The Cardinals need their running backs to force defensive honesty, and right now the player they built that expectation around is watching from the sideline.
Other Arizona storylines are developing in camp beyond the backfield. Sports Illustrated reported Thursday that wide receiver Ihmir Smith-Marsette, working his way through camp on a futures contract, has quietly impressed coaches with his route-running and special-teams value, generating legitimate discussion about his chances at a roster spot. The broader receiver room is still sorting itself out around Harrison.
Trey Benson rounds out the backfield competition and brings enough versatility to warrant genuine playing-time consideration. He is healthy and working, and his presence gives LaFleur options when game plans shift late. But the Cardinals’ real calculation is simpler: how soon does Conner return to team drills, and can the work he misses be recovered before the regular season opener?
The chemistry between a running back and a quarterback is built through live reps, not film sessions. Every handoff that Allgeier or Love takes with Brissett in camp is a repetition that Conner is not accumulating. Timing, mesh points, check-down angles in the flat: these habits require repetition to become reliable. Conner cannot build them from the sideline. And Arizona cannot sustain two separate timelines indefinitely, one for the players on the field and one for the player they are waiting on.
LaFleur gave no indication Thursday of how much longer that wait will last. The timeline Conner needs and the one the Cardinals’ schedule will demand may not be the same thing.
Love had a different kind of morning. The first-team reps arrived ahead of anyone’s plan. He took them.
