TEMPE, Ariz. -- Cardinals wide receiver Michael Wilson stepped into The Wigwam, the resort west of Phoenix where Arizona holds its training camp, carrying something from last season.
It wasn't tangible, but it was noticeable. The wide receiver arrived Wednesday equipped with a new-found confidence, one forged by reaching the 1,000-receiving-yard threshold for the first time in his career.
"You can't fluke your way to a thousand yards," Wilson told ESPN. "I don't care what anyone says. You cannot fluke your way to a thousand yards in the NFL.
"And, so, I would just say I have slightly more confidence just because I know that I can do it. It's not just wishful thinking, like I was last year, 'Hey, I think I can,' or 'I'm confident I can.'"
In his third season, the former third-round pick out of Stanford finished with 1,006 yards (18th in the NFL) on 78 receptions (19th). He also had seven receiving touchdowns (tied for 15th).
"When you reach a thousand, it puts you in, I don't want to say a different class in the NFL, but it's a prestigious group, and it's hard to get a thousand yards," Wilson said.
It's even harder to do it without quarterback stability. Kyler Murray started the first five weeks, struggled, missed the rest of the season because of an injury and was released in March. Jacoby Brissett, who's on his seventh team, ignited the offense in Murray's place, and in particular Wilson's output, throughout the second half of the season. Brissett's future is murky as he hopes for a new contract.
And it wasn't like Wilson was the Cardinals' top receiver. Trey McBride continued his ascension as one of the NFL's elite tight ends with a team-leading 1,239 yards, 11 receiving touchdowns and 126 receptions. Marvin Harrison Jr. also was a prime target, although he played in just 12 games because of injury.
But despite less-than-ideal circumstances, Wilson made a statement that should reverberate around the NFL -- as well as fantasy football drafts -- this fall, no matter who lines up at quarterback.
There are many reasons for Wilson's emergence, including his decision to work with his personal trainer, Nicholas Edmond, throughout the season. Edmond also will be joining Wilson at camp.
"Now it's, 'No, I've done it. It's reality.'" Wilson said. "How can I build upon this and then continue to now turn a 1,000 yards into 1,300 or 1,000 to 1,500, 1,600 or Pro Bowl, All Pro.
"What's the limit now?"
WILSON STARTED WORKING with Edmond in late January 2025 after Wilson and his wife, soccer star Sophia Wilson, decided to stay in Arizona during the offseason while she was pregnant with their daughter. Wilson and Edmond hit it off, and a relationship, friendship and synergy blossomed.
About a month into working together last year, Edmond knew he needed to keep working with Wilson during the regular season.
"'Listen, this offseason stuff is really good, but I need you in-season,'" Edmond recalled saying.
Edmond sent Wilson a four-page document that outlined his training plan with the hows, whats and whys. Wilson didn't hesitate.
"It's more common now than it was when I was playing, for sure," said former NFL wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh, who works with Wilson during the offseason. "But Mike is smart. Mike knows that he wants to play football for a long time. In order to do that, you have to spend money to make money.
"I say that to say if I have to go deal with my personal guy once, two, three times a week to keep me healthy and play 17 games, then I'm going to do it."
Wilson had two priorities last offseason: stay healthy for the entire season and play faster. The latter was a result of a conversation Wilson had with former Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon during his exit interview after the 2024 season. Gannon wanted Wilson to play faster and be more explosive. Wilson took it to heart.
During last offseason, Wilson and Edmond worked at least four days a week, and went five days most weeks, for about two to three hours each session on the field and in the weight room. During OTAs, their time together dropped to just one day a week, every Friday, and then back up to every day between OTAs and training camp.
Then, during what was supposed to be a break during training camp last year, the two continued working by happenstance when Edmond booked a staycation at the same resort that the Cardinals were staying at. He noticed a number of people wearing the Cardinals' logo and quickly texted Wilson, and the two fit in workouts together in between practices and meetings.
Edmonds' presence at The Wigwam this year was planned so the two can keep their routine without a break.
"I liked what we did last offseason a lot," Wilson said. "I was running my fastest miles per hour I've ever ran [high 19.0 mph and low 20.0 mph range]."
Their sessions during training camp launched Wilson into the season, but not in the way he had hoped.
Through the first five games last season, Wilson had 52 receiving yards and one touchdown on eight catches with 18 targets. Not the start he expected or was prepared for.
"If you went back to Week 4 and said, 'You're going to have a thousand yards,' would I believe you? ... The real answer would be, 'I don't know,' because, I mean, I only had [36] yards at that point," Wilson said.
"I just kept telling him, 'Hey, stay ready, stay ready. It's going to happen," Edmond said. "It's going to happen.'"
All the while, Wilson and Edmond kept their same regiment every week. Wilson would lift at his house with Edmond on Tuesdays during a recovery day. They'd throw a bit and do some strength and movement work to get some of the soreness out of Wilson's body. Then on Friday, they'd go through a workout that consisted of minimal sets with high velocity and explosive work that helped Wilson feel good about moving side to side, running and producing force on Sundays.
On Saturdays, Edmond, who played football at what's now SUNY Morrisville, a Division III school in upstate New York, would throw to Wilson, working on specific routes that Wilson would run in games, and they'd play ping-pong to keep Wilson's hand-eye coordination sharp.
The work paid off in Week 11, when Wilson's season -- and career -- changed.
WITH HARRISON OUT with appendicitis, Wilson went on a tear with games of 185 yards -- his career high -- and 118 yards in back-to-back weeks. Harrison returned for the next game and Wilson turned in just 36 yards, but with Harrison out again a week later, Wilson had 142 yards in a loss to the Rams. That was the game when Wilson knew everything he was doing was working.
The week after the game, Wilson said to Edmond: "Yeah, this is what we need to be doing until I finish my career."
"I think at that point I was like, 'Holy s---, I'm 3-for-3 at this point. The games that Marv hasn't played in, it's three games. Three games, three 100-yard games. Who else in the league is doing that? And three out of four games, 100-yards-plus and above 10 catches, right? I don't think I dropped the ball at all. So I think at that point, I was like, 'Holy s---, whatever I'm doing, I need to keep doing it because clearly it's working.'
"And I was going into games having such good weeks of practice and feeling so confident that I was like, I need to keep working with Nick because the laws of football are rewarding. Yeah, it was rewarding."
Wilson knew from watching his 2024 film that there was a direct correlation between his production and how fast he ran. He also knew that speed, weight and production had a tendency to drop off during the second half of a schedule as the volume of a season takes its toll. That's what he wanted to keep from happening like it did in his first two seasons.
After every game, a list is posted for the players with the top 20 fastest speeds from that week. Wilson said his name was consistently on it until about Week 10 in 2023 and 2024. Then, from Weeks 11 to 18 in those seasons, he'd slow down.
Not last season.
Wilson's average highest speed from Weeks 11 on last season was 19.88 mph compared to 19.04 mph during the same span, which included two fewer games, in 2024.
When his final nine games of his season are compared from 2025 to 2024, Wilson had a higher maximum speed in six from last season.
"I think my routine with Nick helped me sustain, because the analogy I like to give about what your body and what your athleticism looks like is, at the start of the season, everyone's a Ferrari," Wilson said. "You've trained for six months, so you're as fast as you're going to be for that year. You're as strong as you're going to be. You're heavier.
"But because with the volume of the season, you start to lose like a little bit of juice every week because of the taxing of the season, the hits. So, by the end of the season, you've now went from a Ferrari to a Toyota Corolla, right? Literally, that's how it feels. You don't test as well, you're not jumping as high. We do all the force plate numbers. Everyone goes down like this. And all the metrics, speed metrics, vertical metric, explosion, all that stuff tends to go down."
That changed last season.
"My goal with Nick was, can we slow that recession?" Wilson, who turned 26 in February, said. "And that's what we did last year. And I think that helped me perform at such a high level last year because I was still moving like I was during training camp."
Wilson used this offseason to work on his mental approach to the game, how to stay focused and locked in on every play, knowing he's bound to get more targets from the onset of this season. Edmond set his own goals for Wilson: 1,300 yards, 10 touchdowns and the Pro Bowl.
"As soon as the season ended, I told him, 'Hey, yeah, that was cool. You got 1,000 yards.' That's what we wanted," Edmond said. "We literally spoke into existence. But I told him they don't pay you to do it once. They pay you to do it twice.
"So, I told him this year, the goal is Pro Bowl or bust. He has it in him to go to the Pro Bowl and have All-Pro numbers. Now, it's like, all right, they're giving him the targets and they realize that we throw him the ball, this is what's going to happen.
"So, my job now is to be like, I'm going to have you healthy for those 17 games. We know what works."
