Arians: Cardinals are light years ahead of past OTAs

In his fourth offseason as head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, Bruce Arians is quite impressed with his returning players' performance early in the offseason program now that they've had time to warm up to his style.

Arians' defensive system is one of the most versatile and difficult to define in the league, while his offensive strategy has been explosive and risk-taking.

"It's light years from the last couple of years," Arians told Josh Weinfuss of ESPN.com. "Guys just jumped out there and I think we had one false start there at the end. I would imagine the assignment sheet's very small and rightfully so.

"We looked at a couple little things today and will continue to tweak things and look at them each day but the guys know why they're doing it. Instead of saying, 'OK, watch this team do it and you guys try to do it,' (we're saying) this is yourself doing it. This is how we're going to tweak it and make it better."

Arians has perfected his offseason practice process over time. He was able to shave off 20 minutes due to tempo on Tuesday and got his rookies more reps to get them ready for an NFL field.

"Most teams, probably their rookies got five or six (reps) today. Ours got 42," Arians said. "That's one of the ways we try to bring young players along. I was very pleased with the speed in which they jump out there and played today."