Not Quite

Outside of a 56 yard run by J.J. Nelson, the Cardinals' offense was a trash fire in the first half of their loss to Miami. Palmer threw two interceptions and lost a fumble. The Dolphins got some touchdowns, but as much because Palmer kept gifting them a short field as anything else.

Than Tannehill hurt his knee near the end of the 3rd quarter, the Dolphins' offense was placed in the hands of Matt Moore, and Arizona clawed its way back in. The tied the game with about three minutes left, forced a three and out at about the two minute warning. So with the ball, Palmer promptly dropped the first down snap and had to fall on it. They picked a few of the yards up on a short pass to David Johnson, and then Palmer underthrew Fitzgerald on third down. They punted, their coverage teams completely failed to get their asses downfield and the Dolphins started near the Arizona 40. Then Moore repeatedly torched Justin Bethel by throwing to Kenny Stills, and despite the Dolphins' best efforts to fuck it up, they kicked the winning field goal as time expired.

So Arizona is 5-7-1. Seattle is losing to Green Bay as I type. If that holds, Seattle will not have clinched the division yet, but let's be real: Arizona isn't winning the division. There's nothing they've done this year to suggest they can play well enough for three weeks to pull that off. They might have won this game, but Palmer couldn't stop giving Miami the ball, and couldn't do anything to get the ball downfield when he could hold onto it. He finished with 145 yards on 18 completions, but he was at about 7 completions for less than 50 yards well into the 3rd quarter. Catanzaro had a crap day kicking. He missed a field goal and two extra points, one of which was blocked and returned for two points. But as I said after the Seattle tie, Arizona never seems to have good special teams.

David Johnson did run for 80 yards, so he's up to 1085 on the season, on pace for 1335 yards, and had his 13th consecutive game with at least 100 yards of total offense. Next up, the Saints.