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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. The Arizona Cardinals have an entirely new offense. Kyler Murray is in Minnesota. Jeremiyah Love is in Arizona. And Nathaniel Hackett is the Cardinals' new offensive coordinator under first-time head coach Mike LaFleur, the former Rams OC. But it's another player on defense who might steal the spotlight in 2026: Walter Nolen III.
Arizona selected Nolen with the 16th overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft out of Ole Miss. He had just come off a dominant junior year with the Rebels, earning consensus All-American and first-team All-SEC honors after racking up 48 combined tackles, 14 tackles for loss, 6.5 sacks, three pass deflections, and two fumble recoveries across 13 games.
Standing 6-foot-4 and 300 pounds, Nolen entered his rookie year with high expectations. But right before training camp, he landed on the physically unable to perform list (PUP) with a calf injury, and didn't make his NFL debut until Week 9 against the Cowboys.
When he finally hit the field, though, he made it count. He tallied four tackles, two tackles for loss, and a sack in his first game against Dallas, and added a scoop-and-score touchdown a few weeks later against the Jaguars.
Then injuries hit again, with Nolen suffering a knee injury in Week 16 against Atlanta that ended his year. He finished the season with 11 combined tackles, five tackles for loss, two sacks, and a fumble recovery in just six games.
However, heading into Year 2, Cardinals fans will finally get to see what their first-round pick can do in 2026.
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The knee injury turned out to be a torn meniscus rather than a torn ACL, which is what many had feared, and Nolen has already been working out at the team facility and is trending in the right direction as Cardinals training camp gets underway.
Arizona also cleared a path for him to be on the field more by moving on from veteran Calais Campbell this offseason, who played 525 (46%) of the Cardinals' defensive snaps last year.
The team did draft Kaleb Proctor as another option up front, but he suffered his own torn meniscus during OTAs, which likely puts even more responsibility on Nolen and former first-rounder Darius Robinson.
With defensive coordinator Nick Rallis staying in place, Nolen won't have to learn a new system on top of everything else, and he'll enter Week 1 fully healthy and ready to roll.
If what he showed in his short time as a rookie holds up over a full 17-game season, Arizona may have found its long-term anchor up front.
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