Cardinals-Steelers: One Missed Opportunity Spells Defeat for Cardinals

The Arizona Cardinals were poised to take their first lead of the game. They had they ball at the Pittsburgh one yard line, & the second quarter was running out.  Then, without warning, disaster struck.

We know the rest of the story from there.  Kurt Warner attempted a pass toward the middle of the field, Steelers LB James Harrison, who had dropped in coverage intercepted the ball & took it back 100 yards for a TD that amounted to a 14-point swing & put Pittsburgh in position to take command of the game. 

Somehow, they were unable to do so, & left the door open for a Cardinals comeback that very nearly put a Cinderella finish to their storybook season, until Ben Roethlisberger & Santonio Holmes burst their bubble.

But, let's go back to that play for a moment. Did the Cardinals whiff on a opportunity to take the momentum of the game & possibly change the outcome of the game? I say they did.

Examining the play, the first thing I see is that the Cardinals were on Pittsburgh's one yard line. With a defense like the Steelers, in a situation like that where the field has been shortened, the difficulty in completing a pass to the inside like that increases exponentially.

The LB's in that defense are all very well coached & know where to sit in wait for passes such as the one Warner threw. Same goes for the DB's. So throwing to the inside like that in that situation, into traffic, is a low percentage throw, to be certain.  So, where do they go?

How about going to the best WR in football? One a pattern that the situation just begs for, one that no one has been able to stop. Why did Cardinals Offensive Coordinator Todd Haley not send Larry Fitzgerald on a fade pattern to get the TD?

As we saw later in the game, Ike Taylor couldn't stop Fitzgerald on that play. I doubt any of the Steeler DB's could stop Fitzgerald on the fade.

It's the Cardinals bread & butter play in close, one I saw them run successfully all season long. Who cares if they think it's coming, if they can't stop it, what difference does it make?

It's not like teams didn't know that the 49ers were going to send Jerry Rice on those slant patterns he always broke for long TD runs, they knew, they just couldn't do anything about it. 

Sometimes, avoiding the obvious will get you beat. On this day, I believe that is what happened to the Arizona Cardinals. The Steeler defense did not pressure Warner up the middle, as I said they had to do to reduce his effectiveness. As a result, Warner carved them up with 10-15 yard passes. 

Neither team ran the ball effectively. Again, no surprise there. Ben Roethlisberger was able to get outside the pocket & had great success as a result. Again, no surprise. I had stated that a key to Arizona's success defensively would be to contain Big Ben. They couldn't & paid for it in the end.

But I believe the play that the Cardinals didn't call may have been the one that cost them the Super Bowl. And what a Cinderella story that would've been.