The Arizona Cardinals were supposed to be the best team in the NFC West, an elite team in the NFL, and one of the favorites to win Super Bowl 51.
They’re not.
The Arizona Cardinals are broken, and it’s hard to see how they’ll get right this year.
There are a bunch of problems for the Cardinals, despite a roster that boasts some of the best talent in the NFL. But a few deficiencies at critical positions has Arizona 1-3.
Sunday, the Cardinals lost to the Los Angeles Rams 17-13. The Rams played an admirable game on defense and Case Keenum squeezed everything he could out of the Rams’ offensive potential, but it was clear that the Cardinals had more talent on the field Sunday. It didn’t matter — Arizona couldn’t execute simple things.
The Cardinals’ problems start in a manner typical of most bad teams, with quarterback play. Somewhere between the 2015 NFC Championship Game and today, Carson Palmer lost his way. His arm strength looks zapped and that’s leading to hesitation in the pocket. Palmer has gone from an MVP candidate to a liability for the Cardinals, and while at age 36, that regression shouldn’t be a total shock, the steepness of the fall for Palmer so far this season has been blindsiding.
Palmer was lifted from Sunday’s loss after he hit is head on the turf following an Aaron Donald sack on third down late in the fourth quarter. On that play, Donald lined up as a defensive end, ran around the outside of the offensive line, and without being touched, brought Palmer to the ground.
The play highlighted another problem for Arizona: Palmer has been bad, but his offensive line has been worse. The Cardinals looked to replace their two starters on the o-line this season and the experiment is not going well. While new center A.Q. Shipley has been decent, D.J. Humphries has been a sieve at right tackle and right guard Earl Watford has been just as bad.
The combination of Palmer’s zapped arm, his lack of mobility, and an offensive line whose right side is an open drawbridge is about as bad as it can get, but the Cardinals can take it a step further: they have receivers that cannot separate.
That is, in part, a play calling issue. The Cardinals have eschewed the intermediate passing game — the trademark of the modern NFL — and are instead running lots of deep looks and halfback screens. The play calling is predictable to the point where defenses always seem to have the right look called.
Arizona entered the season with arguably the best wide receivers in the NFL — but so far this season, the wide receivers have been a liability as well — Michael Floyd has been woeful in a contract year, while John Brown finally had a good game Sunday, joining Larry Fitzgerald in the realm of productivity. Is it a one-off or a sign of things to come? The Cardinals have to hope it's the latter.
That’s about all the Cardinals can do right now — hope.
Hope that the offensive line can provide some protection; hope that the wide receivers start to create some separation; hope that Palmer comes back a quarterback reborn.
This was a team that was supposed to be the class of the NFL — we thought that Arizona's questionable linebackers would be their biggest weakness — but their odds of making the playoffs diminish every week. And while a 1-3 record isn’t a death sentence in the NFL, it sure doesn’t look good on a veteran team that’s searching for answers.
