A New Season, But Nothing's Changed In Arizona

Arizona managed to win their season opener, 20-16 over the Seahawks. The defense carried most of the load -just like the latter half of last season - and the offense did just enough, with a largely anemic running game and inconsistent QB play.

I appreciate that the Cardinals stuck with the run (well, more than usual, 22 carries), but getting less than 50 yards out of it is disappointing to say the least. In a reverse of last season, Skelton started the game well, then played poorly in the second half before leaving with an ankle injury. Kevin Kolb came in and played fairly well. It's good to see he wasn't too miffed about being benched, especially since Skelton might miss a game or two.

The Cards' defense had some trouble slowing down Seattle's running game, but on the whole made Russell Wilson look like the rookie he is, sacking him three times and intercepting him once. The defense did continue to have strong showings in the red zone, hold Seattle to one score in 4 trips. That's always a plus, especially if the offense can't get its act together to keep them off the field a little more. Consider that the teams were even in turnovers, that Seattle had a grand total of 1 more yard of offense, but won time of possession by over six minutes. And that's with special teams allowing an 83 yard kickoff return and a 52 yard punt return.

Lots of penalties, 23 overall, and I don't know whether to pin that on the teams or on the crappy refs. I'm allowed to call them crappy. Anytime you can't keep track of something as simple as how many timeouts one team has left (a number that can't be higher than THREE), you are crappy. Cripes, get a little notebook and jot it down or something. Fortunately, Seattle couldn't capitalize, though I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if Arizona was the first team to get screwed in a game that counts by lousy refs. Would have been par for the course, really.

But it didn't happen (this week), and Arizona is 1-0. Course, they started that way last year and lost their next 6 games. And they started that way in 2010 and ended up 5-11, so getting off to a good start is easy. Keeping it going will be the hard part.