Jeremiyah Love out Sunday as Cardinals avoid IR for now

Jeremiyah Love won't be on the field this Sunday. The Arizona Cardinals rookie running back is out for the team's game against the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium, and the reason is an ankle injury that has been hanging around.

Head coach Mike LaFleur made the news official on October 16. Love is dealing with a lingering ankle problem, and this will be the first regular season game he has missed. For a young back still finding his footing in the league, that is a milestone nobody wanted.

The bigger question was whether Arizona would send Love to injured reserve, which would keep him sidelined for a longer stretch. Reports indicate LaFleur said there had been no discussion of that move. For now, the Cardinals are keeping Love off injured reserve and treating Sunday as a single missed game.

Arizona has had a rough recent run, and the injury lands in the middle of it. A national NFL analysis of coaching situations around the league describes a season in which the Cardinals were hurt badly on offense and played most of the year without quarterback Kyler Murray. The team lost 13 of its previous 14 games during head coach Jonathan Gannon's third season.

Gannon, who led the team through that stretch, reportedly said he felt "good" about his job status at the time. The same analysis said Murray was due $36.8 million fully guaranteed in 2026, with another $19.5 million set to become guaranteed if he was on the roster on March 15. It also described a quarterback change as appearing likely. Those contract details concern the offseason and do not explain Love's injury, but they show how much uncertainty surrounded the franchise.