James Conner
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James Conner is one more 1,000 yard season away from making Arizona Cardinals history
You don’t need me to tell you that the Arizona Cardinals don’t come from the biggest or sexiest media market, and therefore, with the exception of former 1st overall pick Kyler Murray, or Marvin Harrison Jr. — the son and namesake of Pro Football Hall of Famer Marvin Harrison Sr. — there isn’t really another household name on the roster. But consistency shouldn’t be overlooked, and James Conner has been the personification of consistency.
Since signing with the Cardinals in April 2021, James Conner has led the team in rushing in each of the four subsequent seasons. He’s not overly flashy, self-indulgent or even entertaining. The brightest spotlight he’s ever had shone on him was when he was at Pitt and put in a position where he had to return from a Hodgkins Lymphoma-Torn MCL combination that would’ve kept a lesser man down. Of course, James Conner refused to stay down.
What Conner is is an unflappable grinder. You can rely on him to carry the rock, push the pile forward, earn the tough yards, and get up and do it again. In baseball terms, he’s an innings eater. And a testament to that steadfast consistency is the remarkable position he finds himself in as he heads into the 2025 season, his 9th in the NFL.
In Arizona Cardinals franchise history, only one player — Ottis Anderson — has rushed for over 1,000 yards in three consecutive seasons. If Conner hits that benchmark in 2025, he’ll become the second player to do so. And even more impressively, Conner could also overtake Anderson as the franchise leader in rushing touchdowns if he finds the end zone 10 times this season.
Cardinals Teammates Inspired by James Conner’s Approach
Whenever James Conner carries the ball, the thought going through his head is fairly simple… ‘Don’t go down.’ He’s not the first running back to have voiced that he runs with an admirable never say die attitude. In fact, a posthumously published autobiography titled “Never Die Easy,” a mantra he lived by on and off the field until he succumbed to bile duct cancer at the age of 46, was written by Chicago Bears Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton in 1999.
(Funny enough, James Conner also wrote a book which was published in 2020 titled, “Fear is a Choice: Tackling Life’s Challenges with Dignity, Faith and Determination.”)
It’s easy to say that this is the way you carry yourself, but for a guy like James Conner, his teammates see it on an every down basis, and the numbers back it up. Over the last two seasons, Conner is one of just four running backs — along with Derrick Henry, Najee Harris and Kyren Williams — to have broken at least 50 tackles. All of those broken tackles haven’t gone unnoticed in the Arizona Cardinals locker room.
“When he makes plays like that, it kind of takes energy away from the defense,” Cardinals left tackle Paris Johnson Jr. told Doug Haller of The Athletic in November 2024. “He’s getting the dirty yards. It takes the air out of the defense and that puts life into us.”
Tight end Tip Reiman said that watching Conner rip off bruising runs, “fires everybody up to go the extra mile.” One of Conner’s former teammates at Pittsburgh, Alex Officer, took it even further, saying of Conner, “He’s one of the toughest, if not the toughest, people I know.”
Now that’s a guy who deserves to be in the Arizona Cardinals record book.