Paris Johnson Jr. Tears Biceps, Out for Season — Cardinals Hand Left Tackle to a Rookie Seventh-Rounder

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2026 — TEMPE — There are injuries, and then there are the kind that make a whole building go quiet. Paris Johnson Jr. grabbed his left arm on the final offensive drive of Sunday’s 36-24 loss to the Giants and couldn’t finish the game, and by Monday afternoon the worst case was official: a torn left biceps, season over, surgery ahead. For the third straight year, the Arizona Cardinals will finish a season without their franchise left tackle. At some point the word “cruel” stops being dramatic and starts being descriptive.

02 How It Happened

Johnson went down on the final play from scrimmage against the Giants, per SI — Arizona was threatening near the goal line on its last offensive drive when the 25-year-old reached for his left arm and couldn’t continue. He had taken every offensive snap of the season until that moment. One play later, his year was over.

Head coach Mike LaFleur delivered the diagnosis to reporters Monday: torn biceps, headed to injured reserve, done for the season. Surgery is coming, though LaFleur said the exact timing was still being worked out. “It sucks for him first and foremost,” LaFleur said. “Here we are in October. Show goes on.” The team made the IR move official Tuesday, along with a second one we’ll get to.

That’s the football part. Here’s the human part: Johnson is 25 years old, in his fourth season, and he has now ended three of them on injured reserve. The position he plays — left tackle, the blind side, the most expensive real estate on the offensive line — is the one a franchise can least afford to keep losing. Arizona keeps losing it anyway.

03 Three Years, Three Endings

Let’s lay out the pattern, because it’s genuinely hard to look at. Johnson arrived as the No. 6 overall pick in the 2023 draft out of Ohio State and played every snap as a rookie — at right tackle, all 17 games, the kind of debut that had Arizona talking about a decade of stability up front. Then the injuries started coming, and they haven’t stopped.

In 2024, a knee injury ended his season with three games to go. In 2025, another knee injury cost him the final five. Now a torn biceps wipes out the final 13 games of 2026. Three seasons, three trips to injured reserve, three different flavors of the same gut punch. When he’s been on the field, the play has been strong — per NBC Sports, he allowed just seven pressures and one sack on 174 pass-blocking snaps this season, though the same data notes 10 sacks allowed over his last 30 games played. The ability was never the question. Availability became the whole story.

The Cardinals picked up his fifth-year option this offseason, so Johnson is under contract for 2027 at just over $19 million, per Cards Wire. That’s the franchise betting — expensively — that the body holds up next time. It’s a bet they almost have to make: franchise left tackles don’t grow on trees, and when this one plays, he plays like one. But three straight seasons ending the same way is the kind of trend that changes how a front office plans a draft.

04 The Kid Gets the Call

So who protects the blind side now? The answer, at least to start, is Jayden Williams — a rookie seventh-round pick who has played all of a handful of snaps in heavy personnel packages. That’s not a typo. The most important job on the Cardinals’ offensive line now belongs to a Day 3 rookie whose NFL experience fits in a highlight clip. Every snap he’s about to take is the biggest of his life, and they start coming Sunday against a Lions defensive front that does not do sympathy.

The depth behind Williams is Josh Fryar, Johnson’s former Ohio State teammate, who played 12 games last season at both tackle spots, per Lions Wire. And Arizona didn’t stop there: on Tuesday the Cardinals signed Jedrick Wills off the Bills’ practice squad, poaching the former 10th overall pick of the 2020 draft. Wills has 57 NFL starts at left tackle — real experience, the kind you can’t fake — but knee injuries have limited him to 12 games over the last three seasons and he didn’t play at all last year. He’s a lottery ticket with a first-round pedigree. The Cardinals are buying every ticket they can find.

None of this is how you draw it up in April. But it’s October, and as LaFleur put it, the show goes on — with a rookie, a swing tackle, and a reclamation project holding down the edges.

05 The Rest of the Pile-Up

Johnson wasn’t the only Cardinal to leave Sunday’s game worse for wear. Tight end Hunter Long suffered a knee injury against the Giants that flew under the radar amid the Johnson news — he went to injured reserve Tuesday as well, per Cards Wire, and must miss at least four games. To fill the roster spots, Arizona promoted tight end Teagan Quitoriano from the practice squad and signed Wills to the active roster.

The interior of the line is hurting too. Starting right guard Isaiah Adams suffered an ankle injury Sunday, and LaFleur told reporters Monday that Adams is most likely out this week — which would mean Jon Gaines gets his second start at right guard. Safety Andrew Wingard is dealing with a bone bruise in his knee that will keep him out a bit. Three starters went down in one afternoon. The training room in Tempe is doing brisk business.

Step back and the picture is a 1-3 football team — the Cardinals didn’t move from 26th in this week’s power rankings (full rankings here) — trying to hold its offense together with duct tape and practice-squad promotions. That’s not a death sentence in October. But it’s not a plan, either.

06 Sunday Comes Fast

There’s no soft landing here. The Cardinals host the Detroit Lions on Sunday at 4:25 PM ET on FOX at State Farm Stadium, and the Lions — 16th in the Week 5 rankings, scoring in bunches — will absolutely test an offensive line starting a rookie seventh-rounder at left tackle and potentially a backup at right guard. This is the kind of matchup that exposes exactly what you lost.

The honest version of this story is that Arizona’s season was already wobbling at 1-3 before Sunday, and losing your best lineman for the year doesn’t steady anything. But the NFL has a way of making heroes out of seventh-rounders in exactly these spots. Williams doesn’t need to be Paris Johnson Jr. on Sunday. He needs to be good enough, one snap at a time, while the Cardinals figure out what this line is for the next 13 games.

For Johnson, the road is longer and lonelier: surgery, rehab, and a third straight offseason spent answering the same questions about his body. He’ll be 26 when camp opens next summer, under contract, with everything to prove and nothing left to prove about his talent. The only question — the one that will hang over this franchise until it’s answered — is whether he can stay on the field. Our sports desk will track the rehab and the rookie filling his shoes; see our Giants-Cardinals game story for how Sunday fell apart.