That One Cardinal Might be Getting Somewhere

Arizona beat Jacksonville 27-14. Yeah, it's the Jaguars, but every win counts, and I've seen the Cardinals blow too many games against shitty teams they should have beaten.

It wasn't a perfect win; Jacksonville scored their first touchdowns at home in almost a year, and were actually leading 14-7 at the end of the first quarter. Once again, Arizona couldn't cover tight ends. They never do seem to figure that out, it's been a problem for years. Arizona went 5-16 on third downs, which is about average for them this year. They only ran for 14 yards on 24 carries, which holy crap, that's bad. I mean, the Jags only ran for 32 yards on 16 carries, but that looks pretty good compared to what the Cards managed. The defense surrendered 111 yards in the first quarter.

So, that's the bad. The good is that after the first quarter, the Cardinals' defense held the Jaguars to 163 yards of offense the next three quarters. The intercepted Chad Henne twice. Carson Palmer threw for over 400 yards and two touchdowns. Perhaps more important from my perspective, he didn't turn the ball over at all. Came close once, threw a pass that was intercepted, but turns out Arians had called timeout before the snap. Whew.

Anyway, now Arizona is 6-4, on the fringes of the wild card race. That's good, but the easy part of the schedule is done. Indy is coming to town, which ought to be interesting. The Colts have been fond of digging a hole for themselves for the last 3 or 4 games, then trying to come back. Arizona also seems to start slow, then gets stronger as the game progresses (especially on defense). I suppose they could both just look really ugly next week to start, then both play better later. I'm more than a little concerned about the O-line's ability to keep Palmer protected from Robert Mathis, but we'll see what happens.

One other bad bit of news for them, both the gunners on their punt coverage unit, Justin Bethel and Teddy Williams might be out. Williams tore an Achilles, so he's definitely out, but Bethel had a concussion, so who knows. Special teams have been a big part of Arizona's success this year (Jay Feely's been almost perfect this year, for example), so losing those two could be bad. Andrew Luck is a dangerous enough QB without hit punt returners giving him short fields to work with. I suppose Arizona could just score on every drive. Then they wouldn't need to punt, and the problem is solved, for one week anyway.