The first surprise of the 2026 NFL Draft came at pick three. The Arizona Cardinals — picking on a card delivered seven minutes after the clock started — selected Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love with the third overall pick. It is the highest a running back has been taken in the NFL Draft since the New York Giants selected Saquon Barkley with the second pick in 2018. It is the first running back taken in the top three since Reggie Bush in 2006. And it is the first first-round running back the Cardinals franchise has drafted since Beanie Wells with the 31st pick in 2009.
The eight-year drought between top-5 running back selections was not an accident. Around 2017, NFL front offices collectively decided the value of premium running back capital was negative — that the league's best backs could be acquired in the second round, the third round, or undrafted free agency at a fraction of the cost of a high first-round pick. The data over the eight intervening years had largely vindicated that belief. Christian McCaffrey was a top-10 pick in 2017; Bijan Robinson was a top-10 pick in 2023; both teams that took them have been Super Bowl participants. But the median first-round running back from 2018-2024 returned roughly 60 cents on the dollar of comparable second-round selections, and the league had calibrated.
The Cardinals' pick at 3 is therefore not just a player selection. It is a positional-philosophy statement. Arizona's general manager Monti Ossenfort — entering his fourth full draft as the Cardinals' top decision-maker — reportedly told the team's ownership in February that this draft was the right time to break the running back freeze. Love's combination of three-down workload (he carried 287 times in 2025 at Notre Dame), pass-game involvement (44 receptions for 386 yards), and home-run speed (a 4.41 40 at the Combine, the third-fastest by a 220-pound back since 2010) is, in Ossenfort's reported phrasing, "a unicorn-class player." The Cardinals had Love as the second-rated player on their board behind only Indiana's Fernando Mendoza, who had already gone to the Raiders at one.
The fit in Arizona is unusually good for a top-five pick. The Cardinals' offensive line, after three drafts in which Ossenfort has spent six top-100 picks at the position, is now a top-eight unit league-wide by both PFF run-block grade and ESPN's win-rate metric. Kyler Murray, when healthy, is a quarterback who needs play-action threat to function and Love is exactly the kind of dual-threat back who creates it. The Cardinals' offensive coordinator Drew Petzing — coming off a 2025 in which Arizona's offensive efficiency jumped from 28th to 14th — has been quietly building the pieces of a modern Sean McVay offense, and Love is the missing piece.
The other character of the moment is Jonathan Gannon, the Cardinals' head coach who was fired by the franchise in March after a 4-13 season. The pick at 3 is the first that ownership made without him in the building. Successor Brian Callahan — hired from Cincinnati's offensive coordinator job — was reportedly the loudest internal voice for taking Love at 3, on the bet that a power-run, play-action offense built around Murray and Love is the cheapest path back to the playoffs. Whether the bet was right will be answered on Sundays starting September 13. Jonathan Gannon, watching from his couch in Arizona on Thursday night, may well end up watching his old draft pick run for 1,400 yards as a rookie under his successor. That is the texture of how this league works.