As the Cardinals finished preparations Friday for their season opener against the Detroit Lions, The Athletic talked to general manager Steve Keim about the season ahead, the hiring of Kliff Kingsbury and proving the skeptics wrong.

Some of Keim’s answers have been edited for brevity.

Putting aside the won-loss record what do you want to see out of your football team that will tell you it’s on the right track?

I think it’s two things. It’s execution and its physicality. You really want to eliminate mistakes particularly in the pre-snap and post-snap stuff, things that are bad football. You want it to look clean, No. 1, and ‘we have enough young guys that are playing that I want to see that there were mistakes early on that they play through and continue to grow and develop as players. With this group of young players, in my opinion, I think we’re going to see some guys that have pretty good years in their rookie years and some other guys in years two or three that sort of take off.

What would make this season be a success in your eyes?

Bottom line is show vast improvement from last year. And to know that we made some outside the box decisions in a number of different places and to know that those tough decisions you made were the right decisions for the organization.

Isn’t it also just being competitive in football games, which you weren’t in a lot of games last season?

There’s no doubt.

Why do you believe this offensive scheme will work?

I think Kliff has his vision. And based on Kliff’s vision, we have some playmakers that really fit what he’s looking to do. I think those guys will be able to execute what he wants to do at a high level. I think without tipping the hand, whatever we do offensively is going to put some stress on people. Again, we have to execute for it to work but at the same time, we’re going to create some mismatches I feel like with our athleticism and our personnel that are going to put teams in a tough spot.

Are you at all concerned about your offensive line holding up given the fact Kliff might run 10 personnel a lot – four wideouts, no tight end, one back – and the tackles will be on islands against edge rushers?

It was no different from when I was with Bruce (Arians). People would complain about Bruce running too much empty and Carson (Palmer) getting hit too often and Bruce used to always tell me, “Well, shoot, if we keep a bunch of people in to protect now nobody’s going to get out and be open.” So it’s the double-edged sword. I think if that’s the mindset we go with and the personnel grouping we do, four or five wide, we better have answers, and that’s either getting the ball out quick, it’s creating a run game out of that or it’s doing some things in the quick game that are going to offset whatever they’re doing. But, again, when you’re doing that, too, you’re putting some pressure on them because generally around the National Football League when you get down to your fourth or fifth cover guys there’s a real mismatch athletically.

Everybody is talking about the offense. But the defense has taken some hits with Patrick Peterson’s suspension, Robert Alford’s injury and the arrest and release of Darius Philon. How concerned are you about the defense being able to hold up?

I think we have a number of really good players on defense. What I think needs to happen is No. 1 they need to play up to their abilities, which I think they can. … We have to play smart football and I know I keep harping on that, but we just can’t beat ourselves. And I think a number of times last year we were not only not good enough from a personnel standpoint we were beating ourselves mentally.

You didn’t think your team played smart football last year, did you?

No. Not at all. This is not a knock on a coaching staff, this is a knock on the organization not being prepared, whether it’s me not acquiring enough players that can process enough information and process the playbook … everybody just seemed to feel like there was a gray area they didn’t understand what they were being asked to do. And they weren’t executing. And there were a lot of mistakes. Again, there’s no blame on any one person. It’s on all of us. We didn’t get it done. It was embarrassing, it was unacceptable to our fans and that’s really where we started this offseason in terms of what we needed to fix and how we needed to fix it. Not only when we acquired players making sure we acquired players with high football IQ and making sure that we had guys that were passionate and loved to study and loved the game.

I want to go back a bit to Kliff’s hiring. What led you to the point of conviction that you were comfortable hiring a head coach who had no NFL coaching experience and a losing record in college?

I’ve known Kliff for a while personally. It wasn’t just because of a friendship. It was confidence in what he did schematically and the way he prepared quarterbacks. I think beyond that how he connected with players and everybody else we interviewed through the process were offensive coaches. Well, they were offensive coaches who were being groomed to be play-callers. They just hadn’t gotten to that point yet. The fact of the matter was when you look at Kliff versus everybody else we interviewed, Kliff has called more football plays than any of them. And when he called football plays the success rate was pretty high. If you look at his college resume and say, “Well, he was a losing college football coach,” again, yes, he didn’t compare to Lincoln Riley but Kliff Kingsbury was getting two-star recruits and he was having to make those players play at a high level versus teams that got five-star recruits. And you have to take that into account. So his ability to still put up a ton of points against Oklahoma, Texas and all those other teams to me, that’s a real credit to him.

You know there are a lot of people around the NFL hoping you fail because you went against the grain in hiring a college coach with a losing record, drafting a 5-10 quarterback and implementing the Air Raid scheme. Is there a part of you anxious to prove those people wrong?

It’s funny. This is a tough business. My first five years the record speaks for itself and you have a really bad year and you don’t have any answers and you’re the dumbest GM in football so it’s the nature of the business. You have to take that with a grain of salt and you have to put blinders on and you have to continually do what you believe in. That’s really all I can do. And I am highly confident in the direction we’re heading in and what Kliff can do.

But you’re a competitor. Don’t you want to shut the skeptics up?

There’s no question. It’s that never-ending chip on my shoulder. My whole life has been built that way, which I love. I was told at a young age that I wasn’t going to be a good football player because I was a big kid and I didn’t make weight for pee wee football. I basically didn’t start until ninth grade and I told everyone I was going to get a Division I scholarship and they doubted me and I got Division I scholarship. Then it was I wasn’t going to play in college. And I was a 3 1/2-year starter and two-time All-Conference, captain as a senior. Then I wasn’t going to get a chance to play in the pros and I had a cup of coffee and a chance. Then I wanted to be a GM and that wasn’t going to happen and here I am. It’s like that is what drives you every day. You continually use that as an incentive. It’s the passion that lives within you and there’s nothing I love more than this game.

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