Damien Woody criticizes Cardinals selection of Jeremiyah Love: 'It's not the way to build a team'

ESPN’s Damien Woody criticized the Arizona Cardinals’ selection of Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love. In the context of what the Cardinals needed as a team as they rebuild, Love was not the ideal pick at No. 3 overall in his mind.

One thing’s for certain, Love was easily the best running back in the class and one of the best pound for pound players in the draft. But Woody’s argument was that Arizona already had a plethora of running backs and they could’ve built up the team with other high value picks.

To be fair to the Cardinals, they also added Chase Bisontis on the offensive line and Carson Beck at QB in the next two rounds before pivoting to defense. But Woody wasn’t as big of a fan of the Love pick.

“It’s not the way to build a team,” Woody said on Get Up. “It’s just not. Here’s the Cardinals running back room. Tyler Allgeier, that they paid from the Atlanta Falcons, right? James Conner is coming back from injury. They drafted Trey Benson in the third round in 2024 and now you add Jeremiyah Love to an already kind of stacked up running back room … How do you build it? Does this … get them any closer to (winning the) NFC West?”

Jeremiyah Love the right pick for Cardinals?

Woody was far from the first person to criticize Love. Former QB Jordan Rodgers said Love was not a generational player, even if Dan Orlovsky fired back.

“Under no circumstance can you take Jeremiyah Love No. 3,” Rodgers said. “You’re going to owe him $50 million in guaranteed money. That’s more than Saquon (Barkley), more than Christian McCaffery, more than Derrick Henry. You can’t do that, especially when you don’t have a quarterback; you don’t have an offensive identity right now. You can’t add a player like that and expect to then take the next step with a running back. It doesn’t happen.”

In 2025, Love became arguably the best running back in college football. He started all 12 games and rushed for 1,372 yards and 18 TDs. He also caught 27 passes for 280 yards and three TDs. Love was selected to the Associated Press First-Team All-America team, won the Doak Walker Award (nation’s top RB), and was a finalist for the Heisman Trophy.

“We have watched over the last couple of years, good organizations, great organizations like Philly, San Francisco, Baltimore, Green Bay, Kansas City, Buffalo all pay running backs $10 million plus,” Orlovsky said. “All those good organizations did it. Maybe we, all of us, are undervaluing what a running back actually is in the NFL. If those organizations are doing it, why are all of us questioning everybody else doing it?”