Wow, Go Little Cardinal!

I had hopes Arizona could beat Indianapolis. If the Rams could do it in in Indy, then surely Arizona could manage at home, I thought. But the doubts always lurk. Palmer could throw a ton of picks. Robert Mathis could obliterate the o-line. Luck could torch the defense.

 None of that happened. The Colts continued their recent practice of starting poorly, Arizona fired on all cylinders from the start, and the game was over almost before it started. The Cards were up 27-3 by halftime, and wound up winning 40-11. That's the most points Arizona's scored, and their largest margin of victory, since they beat Detroit 38-10 last year.  You might recall that was the game where Arizona's D forced 4 turnovers, scored two TD's, and the offense started inside Detroit's 30 three times. Which explains how they scored so many points with less than 200 yards of offense.

The last time Arizona scored more points was Week 14 of 2010, when they beat Denver 43-13 (the game where Jay Feely scored 22 consecutive points).

There's a lot of good here. Palmer was 26 of 37 for 314 yards and 2 TDs. More critically, no INTs (though there were a couple of close calls, but every QB has those). He did get strip sacked once, but the Cards recovered. I'll take it. AT this point Palmer is officially outperforming Kolb from last year. Kolb QB rating was 86.1, and his QBR was 37.96. Palmer's QB rating is only 83.0, but his QBR is up to 47.62. Not spectacular, but he's improving steadily, which is certainly encouraging. The team ran for 120 yards on 30 carries, which is great to see. Mendenhall and Ellington combined for 23 carries and 104 yards, plus Mendenhall had a rushing TD. Go running game! Really encouraging news: Arizona went 7 of 14 on third down! Hopefully that isn't a one game aberration.

The defense only sacked Luck once, but that's alright. They hit him 6 times, Dansby returned an interception for a TD, and Luck threw for only 163 yards. The Colts did average 5.3 yards per carry, but with only 15 carries, that comes out to 80 yards. And 28 of that came on one scramble by Luck (he had 3 yards on his other scramble). Plus there was a 22 yard run by Herron, who had 11 yards on 3 other carries. So 50 yards on 2 carries, 30 on the other 13. I mean, you do't want to allow big runs like that, but on the whole that's not bad. And if you're keeping Luck to one of his worst days passing of his career, then it's not such a big deal.

Depending how San Francisco does tonight, Arizona could be in the 6th playoff spot after this week. OK, the Niners are probably gonna stomp Washington, but you never know. Anyway, I wouldn't have expected that at the start of the season, so hey, games with playoff implications for the Cardinals! Next up, Philly, which should be interesting. On the one hand, it's another road game, against a team coming off their bye, so they'll be well-rested. On the other hand, Nick Foles has gotten some seriously lucky bounces on some of those long touchdown passes, when the other team even remembers to cover his receivers. I'd like to think Arizona's defense won't let Riley Cooper run around their secondary unescorted all day. We'll see.