The Cardinal Ran Into An Eagle. Things Went Poorly

The winning streak was bound to end eventually, and Arizona lost to the Eagles 24-21.

I'm pinning this one on Palmer and the offensive line. The defense held the Eagles to just over 300 yards of offense. Lesean McCoy didn't break 80 yards rushing. The Eagles were 5-for-16 on third down, even worse than Arizona's 4-for-12 (guess last week's game was an aberration). They sacked Foles 5 times. Rashard Mendenhall ran for 76 yards on 18 carries.

But Palmer was also sacked 5 times, and he threw two interceptions, and he lost a fumble on the first drive, handing the Eagles the ball at Arizona's 25. I mentioned this last year, when they lost to the Packers, but it is much more frustrating to be able to watch the game as they're losing, than just seeing the score at the bottom of the screen. I saw the fumble and the resulting Philly touchdown. Then I watched Palmer throw a interception. Then I watched Peterson almost pick off Foles on that deep pass to the end zone, but Desean Jackson did a good job playing defense and swatted it away. Oh, I wanted that pick, especially when Philly scored a TD about 5 plays later.

At this point, Arizona's on the outside of the playoff picture looking in, and the real problem is two of the teams ahead of them - Philly and the 49ers - have beaten the Cards already, so they have tiebreakers. Arizona does have a tiebreaker over Carolina, but the Panthers would have to seriously stumble for that to come into play. The next game is against St. Louis, which the Cardinals can hopefully handle. They narrowly lost to the Rams in week 1, but that was in St. Louis, and the Rams had Sam Bradford. Granted, now the Rams have a running game, and Tavon Austin's become a serious threat, but I'm more worried about Arizona's offensive line holding up against the Rams' pass rushers. Robert Quinn had a field day against them in that first game.