Only One Cardinal Still Playing Now

If the St. Louis Cardinals do something in the offseason, I'll touch on it, but for now, the focus turns solely to football. Good news then, that Arizona defeated the Houston Texans 27-24. The defense scuffled a bit in the first half, surrendering over 200 yards of offense in the first half and 17 points. In the second half, the defense held the Texans to 31 yards, and just one TD. The Texans only ran for 76 yards (at 3.6 ypc), and Case Keenum needed 43 attempts to throw for 201 yards, which drops to 159 once you factor in sacks. Jason Bethel blocked a field goal, and the defense recovered a fumble to score a touchdown to start the game.

All of which was just enough to make up for the offense's typical fuck-ups. Palmer only threw one INT, and managed 2 touchdown passes, but he also lost a fumble, as did Rashard Mendenhall. Rashard also managed just 42 yards on 13 carries, while Andre Ellington ran for 55 on 11 carries. But no, Bruce Arians, you go right ahead giving Mendenhall the lion's share of the work. Why use the vastly more effective option to lighten the load on your intermittently competent QB?

The offense is better than it has been the last, oh three seasons, but let's not fool ourselves. It still isn't good. It might get there, but it hasn't yet. That's what worries me about this team. They can't keep expecting the other two parts of the team to do all the heavy lifting every week. At some point, the offense has to step up and be more consistent. This game wasn't a bad start, ignoring the 3 turnovers. They ran for almost 100 yards, had about 330 yards total offense, only 5 penalties, only 1 sack. If Palmer can just stop handing the other team a short field, they might really get somewhere.