Culter Record Agains Teams With Winning Record
T he Cardinals are 3-4 over their last seven games after opening the flavour with a 7-0 record, transforming, on a dime, from the league's just two-way juggernaut into a bundle of parts masquerading as a team.
On Sun, confronting the Lions in Detroit, you could almost feel the shudders of business organisation seeping through the screen. All those early-era Kliff Kingsbury concerns were back in total force: The dodgy clock management, the lack of organized religion in an (admittedly rough) offensive line clouding the offensive play-calling, the boom-or-bust defensive doctrine striking out more than it striking – again.
Kingsbury's squad had the wait of a side coming unstuck at the incorrect moment. Their final three opponents: The Colts, Cowboys, and Broncos. Driblet 1 – or 2 – and there's a skillful take a chance the Cardinals wind up in a wild-bill of fare spot, and this after opening the year as the league'south terminal undefeated team.
"I thought they played better, coached better, and had a better sense of urgency from the first," Kingsbury said of the Lions mail-game.
The Cardinals didn't just lose. They were browbeaten upwards. Offense, defense, special teams, it didn't affair. And while the result could be held up as notwithstanding another example of football as a whole – and this flavor in detail – being weird, that would exercise a disservice to the Lions, and embrace up some of the long-term concerns almost the Cardinals.
Don't look now, merely the Fighting Dan Campbell'due south have been simmering for some fourth dimension. As ii-11-one teams go, the Lions are equally good as information technology gets. They play with a frenzied energy. They're smart, stay inside themselves, and play difficult. That last part can frequently be shuffled into the category of vapid coach-ism. But with the Lions, it's visceral. Every game, every possession, Detroit makes you earn information technology. Campbell, Ted Lasso in Hulk Hogan's torso, has built a team that's smart, fights like crazy, and is coached by a staff that does artistic things, schematically, on both sides of the ball. This isn't a typical two-win team – and few are also-versed in such matters as Detroit.
Still: This is non a game that a legitimate contender loses this late in the season, non while jockeying for playoff positioning. Detroit is only the third team in the Super Bowl era to enter a game with fewer than two wins and beat a ten-win opponent.
It was a defeat that exposed flaws in the Cardinals' construct. Without Deandre Hopkins, out until the playoffs with an injury, the offense looks impotent when information technology matters well-nigh, salvage for some individual moments of Kyler Murray magic. They drove to the x-chiliad line against the Lions four times on Sunday, coming abroad with just six points.
When Arizona'southward offense is rolling – when the aggressive plays, speedy weapons, and up-tempo pace piece of work in unison – the offense is less most executing football plays as it is psychological warfare. There is no defense you can depict up to slow down Murray, Hopkins, Christian Kirk, Rondale Moore, AJ Light-green, and a complimentary-flowing run-game. They're better than you lot, and they know it, striking y'all over the head with the aforementioned plays over and over again, and banking on the brilliance of their stars to make information technology click.
Rip one of the much-needed bricks out of the facade, though, and the whole thing is liable to tumble down. Losing Hopkins and the threat of the run game has seen the offense stall out, defaulting back to the Salve Us Kyler territory that has been a feature ever since he was drafted.
In that location are bigger issues are on defense. Since Week 9, the Cardinals' defense ranks twelfth in EPA per play, a measure of a group'due south down-to-down effectiveness. Worse than that: They've sunk all the way to 28th in EPA per play on start downs, the metric by which the league'south top defenses judge themselves.
First down is the new third downward. It'due south where a defense gets into assault mode, particularly if the crime is liable to go into anticipated looks. Getting off the field on 3rd downs is a staple of shouty-man-on-TV analysis, but success on get-go downs is more predictive of long-term success. Stopping a team on 3rd down matters, just what difference does it make if they already strung together a succession of commencement downs on early on downs.
Winning the first down – forcing a negative play or creating a 2nd-and-10 – is how defenses can keep upwardly in the era of the footstep-and-space, chunk play crime.
Attack early. Forcefulness a loss. Then sit down back and rally to the brawl. That's the mantra ringing out across football at all levels. Do that, and a defence force ups its odds of cutting off a drive earlier it can brainstorm. The key to a good 3rd-downwardly defense, as bus's like to point out, is winning on first downward.
No squad has embraced that more than the Cardinals. Arizona sends blitzes and pressures on early on downs almost by organizational fiat. Early in the season, it was booming. As opposing offenses have adjusted, it's started to bosom. Losing JJ Watt to injury has compounded the consequence.
Against the league's leading defense, life for the game's about porous criminal offence was … easy. Jared Goff (Jared Goff!) was rarely troubled. He knew what was coming, was prepared, and got rid of the ball in double-time. He completed 21 of 26 passes for 216 yards, three touchdowns and aught picks, shredding the all-out-attack style.
"We have got to effigy information technology out," Kingsbury said postal service-game. In that location is no 1 reply; there are debilitating problems in all iii phases. With three games left against tricky opponents, Kingsbury is running out of time to find any solutions.
Video of the week
Panthers field goal kicker Zane Gonzalez sustained a leg injury during pregame warmups in Buffalo, which led to the team belongings open up tryouts among the residual of its gameday roster to observe a kicker. The results: not pretty.
There is something both magical and unedifying nearly seeing some of Planet World's finest athletes unable to kick a brawl. Brandon Zylstra, a receiver, won the open tryout and was handed get-go duties. Without a viable kicker, the Panthers opted to go for it on fourth downs rather than attempt field goals and to effort two-signal conversions instead of kicking point-afters. They were hammered 31-17 by the Bills.
MVP of the week
Jonathan Taylor, running back, Indianapolis Colts. What can't Taylor do? Runner, receiver, blocker, the Colts' do-everything dorsum leads the league in the totally fictitious Merely Makes Plays stat. We can quibble dorsum and forth about the universal value of running backs, but Jonathan proved his value to this specific Colts team on Saturday night.
Taylor was the star of the Colts' 27-17 win over the Patriots, scoring a breakaway touchdown to ice the game later the Patriots rallied from xx-0 down to pull within a score in Indy. Taylor finished with 170 yards rushing on 29 carries, capped with a 67-g touchdown run to put the game away.
The Colts' offensive line deserves a heaping of credit, as well. It was not a dominant performance, simply it was an important one. Indianapolis does not ask a whole lot of its line (less so with heart Ryan Kelly out on Saturday night). Their job is to run off the brawl, mash the defensive front, look to distort the defensive wall, and offering plenty daylight for Taylor to trip the light fantastic toe and wiggle at the 2d level.
This isn't an all-singing, all-dancing linemen ballet, with tackles and guards pulling and moving in whatever number of wonky directions. It'southward old-school football game, featuring a classic one-cut-and-go running back – maybe the finest unmarried-cut runner in the league. Against ane of the league'south most ferocious fronts, the Colts' offensive line and back was still able to consistently churn out yards on the ground. And that despite Bill Belichick trying to strength the ball into Carson Wentz's hand. The Colts didn't need their line to win the game, just just offering plenty oomph that information technology didn't devolve into a Wentz-or-bust game. The line did its job, and Taylor did the balance.
Stat of the calendar week
The Ravens were without 12 players who count at least $2m confronting their cap in their 31-30 loss to the Packers: Ronnie Stanley; Marcus Peters; Marlon Humphrey; Calais Campbell; Derek Wolfe; Gus Edwards; DeShon Elliott; Patrick Ricard; Jimmy Smith; Sammy Watkins; Chuck Clark; Lamar Jackson. They count a combined $65m against the cap (36%).
Here are a couple more than doozies: Six of the Ravens' top-vii cornerbacks were out vs. the Packers, and they lost the seventh to an in-game injury; the team was down to its 5th offensive tackle, having to insert practice-squad histrion David Sharpe into the lineup after another in-game injury; at kickoff, the Ravens had 23 (!) players on either injured reserves or the Covid-19 list. And the game still came down to a winner-take-all ii-point play at the stop of regulation.
Practise we hand John Harbaugh the Passenger vehicle of the Year award now?
With a roster of cast-offs and lost-looking rookies, the Ravens were able to continue pace with the Packers. Backup quarterback Tyler Huntley was the star of the show. He filled in admirably in place of Lamar Jackson, relying on Mark Andrews, Baltimore's lone, healthy offensive star to comport the ravaged crime. Huntley posted four touchdowns (two with his arm, two with his legs), and continually institute a way to make plays to keep the chains moving and out the Ravens in scoring position. Huntley's play as a backup this season volition earn him starter consideration when he hits free bureau this offseason.
Quote of the week
"Christmas in Green Bay. Where else would you rather be?" – Aaron Rodgers later on clinching the NFC with the Packers' 31-30 win over the Ravens
Rodgers has been contesting a toe injury that has inhibited his deep and intermediate passing over the by calendar month. Against the Ravens, he was back to his best, picking on a roughed-upwards defence to the tune of 268 yards, three touchdowns and zip interceptions.
Getting Marquez Valdes-Scantling back in the fold is a game-changer for the Green Bay crime, too. They've lacked a 2d receiver who tin can consistently toast man-coverage opposite Adams. When healthy, Valdes-Scantling is that guy. Rodgers targeted Valdes-Scantling 7 times against the Ravens, the aforementioned total as Adams. The receiver finished with 98 yards and a touchdown take hold of.
With the win, the Packers moved to 11-3, clinching the NFC North and a playoff berth.
Elsewhere effectually the league
After a week of dorsum-and-forth between the NFL league office, team owners, and the NFL Players Association, the league has opted to shift to targeted Covid testing. Meaning: Weekly testing of every thespian is out. Now, merely those with symptoms will exist tested. Unvaccinated players will still exist tested daily. Players volition also be able to return from the Covid listing sooner than they could under the previous policy. The modify changes come ii days afterward the NFL eased its return-to-play protocol for players who test positive, 1 day later three games were postponed, and at the end of a week in which the virus sent over 100 players to the league'due south Covid list.
The shift in policy is about the obvious: Money. The NFL has no extra weeks congenital into its schedule to allow for games to be rescheduled. Postponing ii games from this weekend to adjacent Tuesday has already caused all sorts of consternation about the fairness of those games (and the games that will follow) for the four teams involved and the general integrity of the league. By reducing testing, the league volition see a reduced number of cases, a reduced number of players forced to miss games, and a decreased likelihood of a squad being unable to field a squad or the league needing to reschedule further games – which would issues of competitive balance, and could affect the league'southward TV and sponsorship deals.
When will NFL players larn not to mess with the Football Gods? After Vegas' debacle in Kansas City, you'd have been forgiven for thinking information technology would be a while until a side attempted the road-squad-stomps-on-the-home-teams-logo routine. Nope. The Titans took it upon themselves to dance all over the Steelers' logo during the pre-game warm-ups. Downward 13-3 at half-fourth dimension, the Steelers came from behind to assure a belatedly 19-13 win. Over the last iii weeks, teams that have stomped on an opposing team's logo have been outscored 67-22.
This weekend's AFC results mean: If the Kansas City Chiefs win out, they will exist the number one seed in the conference. The Chiefs have the Steelers, Bengals, and Broncos left on the schedule. If they win all three remaining games, they volition accept the number i seed and the sole adieu week heading into the playoffs ... just every bit everyone thought a month-and-a-half ago.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/dec/20/how-the-cardinals-went-from-the-nfls-best-record-to-a-team-in-free-fall
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