Yea, the Cardinals do not have a higher floor than the 49ers.
I agree with that. I think the Cardinals could end up being pretty bad with the injuries/suspensions/defections sustained on defense. If the o-line doesn't gel as expected, they could be in for a rough season in that division. Can't see them finishing last in the division though with St. Louis essentially QB less.
Niners in for a setback year! I agree that the Niner floor is too low but the Cardinal floor is not too high. We'd have to have a serious injury to a crucial player or two to have any chance of only winning 7. If we can sweep STL which we should and split with just one team between SEA and SF, we can very realistically hit 11 wins with this schedule. The Giants are playing sloppy and we get them early before they get their shit together, we've had the Lion's number for years and we normally have the Eagles' as well. The other teams are straight up garbage or are going to have a rude awakening this year (KC). The only teams outside the division we have that high a chance of losing (and they are all winnable for us) are Denver and MAYBE Atlanta if they return to form.
The OL looked great against Cinci and they have a good defense. This is also without Cooper even playing although I expect him to take some time to get in the swing of things anyway. Everyone keeps trying to say we'll regress with the D from the losses but that's not true. Dockett was being outperformed by Rucker in camp and while still valuable taking on double teams, isn't the same guy he was in 08. We have a couple young guys that share his skill set and it's not going to cripple us as much as most think. His greatest value is emotional leadership and he's going to be on the sidelines per Arians' request all year to provide that. Dansby was straight up garbage without Washington in and I expect him to be lousy in CLE unless someone else on the field can save his ass like D Wash did. There's no real loss there, we have enough play makers in the secondary. D Wash is the only true loss and the area it hurts is pass rush which is the one lacking part of our D. He was not a proponent in our top run D and our replacements are great at that between Minter and Foote along with Bucannon staying in the box. We will really need Abraham to have a nice year to have any real rush but our upgraded secondary is going to really help there. The fact is that we still have a top run D if not THE top still and we on paper have the other top secondary in the league outside of SEA. It's humorous to see people act like our D will be bad. We are getting Honey Badger back as well and he's a great play maker.
Then you have our offense which will be light years ahead of last year and the largest difference maker in us making the play offs this year. We have so many weapons it's ridiculous and so many of them have been making plays. Palmer has the system down now and should be the form we saw the last half of the season last year out the gate. The two bad plays people will point to in the Cinci game were not his fault, the pick 6 was on Fitz who fucked up his route and the over throw to Floyd was due to Floyd hesitating for a step which you can watch on re-play, Palmer threw it right on the money, Floyd just didn't get where he was supposed to be. They will iron this out and we will really surprise people this year.