Trey McBride Camp Update — August 23: The Target Ledger Took the Week Off
2026 NFL Season · Sunday, Aug 23
McBride played with the starters against Dallas in a half wrecked by penalties, and no charting this window measured his targets in practice or the game. The volume case that defines him goes into the preseason finale intact and untested.
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Trey McBride spent Saturday night on the field and out of the box score narrative. He was among the day-one starters head coach Mike LaFleur committed to playing against Dallas, per Darren Urban at the team website, in a half where Gardner Minshew completed 19 of 23 passes for 177 yards — and where the drives kept dying by flag rather than by coverage: two touchdowns wiped out by penalties on tight end Rivaldo Fairweather on a single drive, a false start at the Dallas one-yard line, two field goals to show for it in a 34 to 13 loss, per the Associated Press. It says something about the week that the tight end position made Cardinals news for penalties by the fourth option rather than targets to the first. None of the attributable accounts charted McBride's individual usage, and no practice file this window measured his target share the way last week's did.
So this was a week the ledger simply did not update, courtesy of an offense too busy relitigating its own penalties to produce a clean read on anyone. Back in June we called McBride the simplest bet on the Arizona roster — a league-leading target volume that is about as quarterback-proof as it gets — and nothing that happened this week touched it in either direction.
Nothing at cutdown threatens him, so the checkable items are usage items: his target share if the starters play a stretch in Friday's preseason finale at Green Bay, and whether the practice files show him back as the first read once regular-season preparation begins. We'll check after cut day.
_Data via nflverse._
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