TEMPE – Marvin Harrison Jr.’s Cardinals tenure ended well short of expectations.

The team officially announced it had traded the wide receiver to the Houston Texans on Monday, along with a 2027 sixth-round pick in exchange for a 2027 second-round pick and seventh-round pick. 

When they selected him fourth overall in the 2024 draft, the Cardinals hoped Harrison would become the next great franchise player and a game-breaking receiver. He had 143 receptions for 2,474 yards and 28 touchdowns over his final two seasons at Ohio State. He was tabbed by most draft analysts as a can’t-miss prospect.

But 33 games into his NFL career, he has caught just 108 passes for 1,578 yards and 13 touchdowns, and his numbers have dropped dramatically since a promising rookie season in which he caught 62 passes for 885 yards and eight touchdowns.

The decision to move on from Harrison raised a lot of questions that local and national analysts and reporters tried to answer.

Was this another mistake by Cardinals general managr Monti Ossenfort, whose four-year draft record is growing increasingly alarming? Was it a failure of successive coaching staffs under Jonathan Gannon and Mike LaFleur, the latter of whom only had Harrison for four games before the team decided to sit him in a loss to Detroit on Sunday? Were quarterbacks Kyler Murray and Jacoby Brissett the problem? Were Harrison’s work habits and inability to gain separation from NFL cornerbacks to blame? Was it a combination of all those factors?

Michael Wilson’s three-year extension in September and the emergence of Trey McBride as one of the game’s best tight ends may have played a role in Harrison’s lack of production, but in Week 2 this season, Harrison gained national attention for his lack of effort in both run blocking and route running in a tweet from azcentral beat writer Theo Mackie that went viral.

Harrison’s inability to create separation has been another major factor in his lack of output. During his time with the Cardinals, Harrison ranked last in the NFL among all qualifying wide receivers (50-plus targets) in average separation at target arrival, creating just 2.1 yards of separation per targeted route.

Mackie also noted that Harrison wasn't winning matchups against man coverage or zone coverage and he wasn't consistently making contested catches. 

While his work on the field is telling data, Harrison has also had to work through two coaching changes and two quarterback changes that disrupted any sort of continuity he might have gained. When he arrived, Quarterback Kyler Murray was leading the Cardinals and there was hope for a dynamic pairing with Harrison. On Oct. 5, 2025, Murray exited a Week 5 loss to the Titan with a foot injury and that was the last time the two shared a game field.

From that point, Jacoby Brissett has been the leader of the Cardinals. While Brissett has targeted Wilson and McBride with regularity, Harrison just hasn't clicked with Brissett, registering just three games with more than 50 yards receiving. Across all games played together in the 2025 and 2026 seasons, Brissett targeted Harrison a total of 54 times in 11 games, with only 13 targets in four games this season.

In 22 games with Murray, Harrison had 82 catches for 1,191 yards and 10 touchdowns. In games without Murray, he had 26 catches for 287 yards and three touchdowns. So was he capable of producing with the right quarterback?

The Athletic’s Doug Haller wondered if the Cardinals could have waited until the Nov. 10 trade deadline to see if quarterback Carson Beck could be a good pairing with Harrison. The Cardinals selected Beck in the third round of the 2026 draft, but LaFleur has repeatedly shut down speculation about Beck replacing Brissett despite the Cardinals’ 1-4 start.

"I've got way too many other things that I need to correct right now,” he told reporters after the loss to the Lions. “Jacoby was not the problem. We were a problem as a team today. And again, that starts with me."

LaFleur has a history of maximizing wide receivers, whether it was the Ram’s Puka Nacua, the Jets’ Garrett Wilson or the 49ers’ Deebo Samuel Sr. When he first arrived in Arizona, he noted the need to help Harrison progress.

“It's our job to unlock it and his job to meet us halfway,” LaFleur said in March at the NFL league meetings.

But when examining his scheme on game film, LaFleur was using Harrison more as a decoy or serious threat while opening up the rest of the field for Wilson and McBride. These schemes were getting others open and creating better offense, but perhaps at Harrison’s expense. 

Another point of analysis that is gaining traction is the performance of Ossenfort. Since taking over for Steve Keim in 2023, Ossenfort is 16-40 as Cardinals general manager with a .286 winning percentage that ranks 31st out of 32 teams.

Arizona Sports’ Tyler Drake noted that of the 21 players drafted during Ossenfort’s first two seasons as general manager – players that by now should reasonably have made an impact  – just eight remain on the roster. 

Wilson, offensive tackle Paris Johnson Jr. and cornerbacks Garrett Williams and Will Johnson have proved to be solid draft picks, while defensive lineman Dante Stills and defensive back Dadrion Taylor-Demerson have shown promise, but Harrison, edge rusher BJ Ojulari, defensive lineman Darius Robinson, running back Trey Benson, defensive tackle Walter Nolen and running back Jeremiyah Love are among the questionable higher-round picks, with Love being selected at No. 3 overall in 2026, a rarity for running backs.

Ossenfort also made the decision to move on from Murray and did not land a suitable replacement this offseason.

One of Ossenfort’s biggest decisions came during the 2024 draft when considering Harrison and receiver Malik Nabers. The race between the two was close until the Cardinals reportedly found some character issues with Nabers and ultimately took Harrison fourth overall. 

At the time, it seemed like the right decision for Ossenfort and the Cardinals to select a player who was widely lauded by draft analysts. But Nabers caught 109 passes for 1,204 yards his rookie season and after a 2025 season plagued by ACL and meniscus tears, he is off to a good start this season.

Ossenfort did not speak directly to local media after the Harrison trade was announced. That has been a hallmark of his tenure as well. Instead, he released a statement through the team.

“Decisions like this are never easy,” the statement read. “Ultimately, we have to do what is best for our football team, and that will always be the driving factor.” 

While LaFleur declined to discuss specific reasons why the trade was made – "I'm not going to totally get into that right now," he told reporters after the loss to the Lions – he took some accountability for Harrison’s lack of success in Arizona.

"I really like Marvin Harrison,” he said. “He's a good person. I wish him well. We did what we thought was in the best interest of the Cardinals. Any guy that does not play to the level I feel like they're capable of, I'm always going to put that on me and coaching in general."

Instant analysis (and blame) was unavoidable in the wake of the Harrison trade, but the full picture won’t be clear for another season or two once Harrison has had an opportunity to establish himself with the Texans. That said, Mackie offered some sobering data on Harrison’s prospects.

Since 2000, 36 receivers have been drafted inside the top 10, with 16 of them failing to average at least 50 yards through their first 33 NFL games (Harrison’s current total). Four were eventually traded, all for third-day draft picks, and of those who remained with their drafting team, only three ever registered a 1,000-yard season in their career.

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.