Arizona Cardinals Finally Proving to Be a Weak, Depleted Team

The Arizona Cardinals didn’t play like a team worthy of leading a division during a 29-18 loss to the Atlanta Falcons.

They also didn’t play like a team that entered Week 13 with the best record in the NFC. They didn’t even play like a playoff team and certainly not like a team capable of winning a single game in January.

No, in many ways the Arizona Cardinals we saw Sunday were finally what their injury report says they are: a weak, depleted team. In many other ways, they were just weak.

The Cardinals’ slow march through a season with far too many bones breaking and muscles ripping has been well-documented. Looking back once more for good measure, defensively they lost 28.5 sacks from 2013 through injuries, a suspension and a key free-agency departure. More recently, on the other side of the ball wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald missed his second straight game this week, and quarterback Carson Palmer is done for the season.

Yet the Cardinals have kept slugging, winning nine games and six straight before falling to the Seattle Seahawks at CenturyLink Field, a place where winning streaks generally meet their deaths.

But even with all their depth and aging veterans like linebacker Larry Foote having standout seasons after being revived from the scrapheap, a tipping point would be reached. Eventually, the pixie dust and/or magic beans surely hidden in Bruce Arians’ Kangol had to run dry.

That point of no return seems to be Fitzgerald’s injury. Or maybe it was Andre Ellington’s hip problem? Or Tyrann Mathieu’s cracked thumb? Both the running back and safety left Sunday’s loss and didn’t return, and a team that was already trending toward being normal started to look downright plain.

Mathieu’s absence didn’t help matters defensively, as Falcons wide receivers Julio Jones and Harry Douglas both finished with over 100 yards through the air. And the offensive support for a backup quarterback drained even further. Ellington’s departure early in the second quarter contributed to a pummeling, with the Falcons outgaining Arizona 500-329 total yards.

But Ellington didn’t throw this ball…

Credit: NFL.com

That’s Drew Stanton’s first interception on a ball he chucked up the middle to wide receiver Jaron Brown. It wasn’t a play where Stanton had to thread one into a tight hole or manipulate a safety away from where he wanted to place the ball.

There wasn’t a defender within five yards of Brown after he found a hole in zone coverage, and Stanton wasn’t under duress. It was the definition of a routine throw against a Falcons secondary that fell far below suffocating status, entering Week 13 allowing a league-worst 284.1 passing yards per game.

Yet there was Stanton, heaving a ball the 6'2" Brown could only reach with his fingertips even after attempting a leaping catch. The deflected football landed in the hands of Falcons safety Dwight Lowery, and two plays later Jones was in the end zone.

That capped a disastrous first quarter where the Cardinals gained only 22 yards offensively and were already down 17-0. This was all coming against a team that hadn’t won a game outside of its own division.

Later there was brief hope, and Stanton dutifully destroyed it again. The Cardinals were down 16 points midway through the fourth quarter but had advanced to just past midfield. Maybe there was a miracle cooking? Nah.

Once more Stanton’s intended target (this time wide receiver Michael Floyd) was as open as humanly possible up the middle. Once more the degree of difficulty on the throw was only a notch or two above zero. Once more Stanton saw the scariest ghost and pressure that didn’t exist.

And once more a ball sailed high into a defender’s waiting arms.

Credit: NFL.com

Before you put those sharpened pitchforks to use and pelt Stanton with fish sticks, know that this is what should have been expected.

Sure, Stanton has now thrown five picks over his last 97 pass attempts dating back to Week 11, which is less than desirable. And he’s led an offense that’s scored only three touchdowns over its last 12 quarters. But although his accuracy certainly regressed Sunday (ahem, see above), Stanton still has the deep arm to be, at worst, an impressively adequate caretaker in an Arians' offense.

“We can win the Super Bowl with Drew Stanton,” Arians confidently told The MMQB's Peter King after Palmer’s ACL tear. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

There’s a caveat to that statement, an unspoken one because no sane coach would put the fate of his team’s season in the arm and mind of a backup quarterback.

In a moment of truth after an injection of some kind, Arians surely would tell you that even with disastrous games like what we saw Sunday, Stanton can keep the Cardinals firmly in the playoff conversation and make sure they remain contenders. But he can only do that when his play is a secondary concern and he’s in a situation where his inevitable mistakes aren’t crippling. So he needs his defense to stay dominant and swarming.

Instead Sunday, the Cardinals defense went for the full inferno, and cornerback Patrick Peterson kept throwing logs on the fire.

Cardinals game(s)	Rushing yards allowed	Passing yards allowed	Total yards
Week 13	142	358	500
Averages over previous 11 games	84.5	254.6	339.1

There the most glaring gut punch is the one delivered to the Cardinals run defense. Much of Atlanta’s yardage on the ground came from a 55-yard run by running back Steven Jackson in the first quarter. Prior to Week 13 the Cardinals had defended 259 runs, and the longest gain allowed was 40 yards.

Later running back Devonta Freeman also ripped off a 19-yarder. But even those long runs weren't fatal because the Falcons’ 28th-ranked rushing offense had only a few home run cuts and little else (4.2 yards per carry). The true reason for Arizona’s demise came from an unlikely source: a cornerback paid to shut down the league’s most athletically gifted receivers.

Peterson was below ordinary after telling Michael Cunningham of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he was anxious for a one-on-one matchup with Jones. He was lost, sometimes spinning and nearly always losing.

Jones finished with a single-game career high of 189 receiving yards on 10 catches with a touchdown. That includes receptions for gains of 25, 32 and 41 yards, though his foot was likely out of bounds on his longest grab, and the play inexplicably wasn’t challenged.

Peterson struggled earlier this season, though he had rebounded against the league’s toughest competition. In recent games against the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys he allowed a combined 80 yards while primarily assigned to Calvin Johnson and Dez Bryant, according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required).

But overall he’s now given up eight touchdowns, again per PFF. That’s not a number we associate with a shutdown corner or a defensive anchor who can be trusted during otherwise dire times.

It’s a number that belongs to a liability.

The Cardinals have been reduced to a series of regressions, the kind that are expected and still horrible—and the unexpected and crushing kind too.

One came from Stanton, who looked like a backup quarterback Sunday far more often than a competent NFL starter. Another came from a defense that allowed 312 yards in just the first half and 183 in the first quarter. And a third came from Peterson, who looked much more like the cornerback who’s allowed an opposing passer rating of over 120.0 in three previous games, per PFF.

Arizona still leads the NFC West, and it's atop the conference only through a tiebreaker, with a sloppy mess emerging now that the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers share the same record (all at 9-3). But more than just that division crown is now in question given the Cardinals' stumbling on both sides of the ball and games against the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers still teed up as part of a brutal finishing stretch.

Soon any playoff spot at all will be in jeopardy if the bleeding doesn't stop. In the NFL, it doesn’t take long to go from the feel-good upstart story to the spiraling team on life support.