Cardinals, biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch! The NFC West Overlords now have won 7 in a row over the kittens
Well, nothing unexpected happened here unless you were as delusional as Kas and FMT. Actually, taking Fatford out of the game was surprising and I can't think of a more official admittance that your team was wrecked than benching your clear starter because of how badly he's getting bodied. This team has put up over 40 points 3 out of the 5 games we've played and I don't give a shit what teams we played, that's crazy and no one else is doing it. Besides, we all know GB is a contender and they only managed to put 17 on the same Niners team we dropped 47 on. They also scored in the twenties I believe against the same Bears D we put 48 on. My point here is that the quality of the teams we are playing does not invalidate what we're doing as a team. Besides, so many pundits want to crown the Chickens out west and they had to cheat to beat the lowly Lions and barely managed the win even doing so
We are completely and utterly blowing bad teams out, you couldn't ask for more from a good or great team. 190 pts in 5 games? I'll take that shit any year!
We had a wonderful day running on the ground and with our D, Palmer didn't have to throw much. Hell, we beat them down so thoroughly that the coach getting flack for leaving Palmer in too long in other blow outs benched him to rest while Stanton finished the game. For a low stat sheet, 11 for 14, 161 yards and 3 TDs looks pretty good. Palmer is now tied with Rodgers in leading the league in passing TDs though Brady would likely be in the equation if he didn't have a bye week already. Fitz still leads the league in receiving TDs and we already have more rushing TDs then we had all of last year combined! What a difference in our running game
Speaking of, isn't it crazy that the Seahawks and Cardinals are the leading two rushing teams in the NFL with both using backup RBs for the majority of the season thus far? Rawls is better than anyone anticipated and Chris Johnson has more in the tank than anyone wanted to give him. At this point, I'm going to say he's our lead back regardless if Ellington starts and Elly a potent weapon. It was great to see Elly get that sixty something yard TD in his first game back. We entered the Rams game perfect in the red zone and after the Rams crushed that, we got back to our scoring ways with a perfect 5 for 5 in the red zone against the Lions.
Defense....Well I don't have to say much. 6 turnovers is crazy and they provided a lot of short fields for Palmer. Redding was classy and opted to not run Stafford over on that pick though maybe Lions fans would have been happy with us injuring him on a pick 6 like we did Cutler. Peterson passed his test and shut Megatron down but to be fair, the QB play was so bad it wasn't a proper test. Still, if his coverage was bad, Stafford could have locked onto Megatron all game and it might have been a different game. This defense is the No Fly Zone and it showed. When a turn over starts rain, we make it pour and all the secondary gets in on the party.
The negatives were that we didn't capitalize on the first two turnovers in the first quarter and that's unacceptable. If you play a good team, that'll hurt. More than this though are a few injuries. Demens is more a ST ace but we need talent there so it's a blow but the real bummer is Okafor. He's by far our best pass rusher on a team that desperately needs better pass rush. A huge blow
The silver lining? We signed Dwight Freeney
My father and I wondered why we didn't snag him in the off season or any other team for that matter and it turns out that he wanted too much money after ranking 7th in the league on QB hurries last year. Now signing him to the same 1 yr minimum we gave CJ, he's coming to Zona and that's going to be huge with Okafor out! He might just play situation ally at first though, who knows what football shape he's in but he passed his physical today. We offered sack incentives which is awesome but even if he just generates a lot of hurries on QBs, that will be HUGE with this secondary. We already lead the league in interceptions and it could really go up with Freeney but we'll see. There's no risk with this low contract. Hopefully Okafor doesn't miss too many games and we can have them both in together, that could really turn the rush around.
I'd like to give a quick shout out to the Bengals for beating the Chickens, we now once again have a two game lead in the division. As coach said last night "We ain't giving that shit back!". 4-1, Go Cardinals!
