MVN - Most Valuable Network

Cardinals get destroyed by Seattle, 42-21.

In a game that wasn’t as close as the score indicates the Arizona Cardinals got slapped around today by the Seattle Seahawks. The win gave Seattle the NFC West for the forth straight season and put the Cardinals at 6-7, a game behind the surging Minnesota Vikings in the wild card race.I find it amazing we are even discussing playoffs with the Cardinals at 6-7 and the devastated roster they are playing with at this point in the season. The team is still playing hard and the veteran leadership is keeping these guys focused, but this game today was a total train wreck on several levels.

1. The Cardinals lost starting TE Leonard Pope to what looks to be a season ending ankle injury, further depleting an already weak tight end position. While Pope still drops too many balls and makes too many mistakes, he has improved a great deal and is probably a year away from being a good NFL tight end. With three games left to play his loss is going to really hurt, particularly with the wide out’s so nicked up.

2. Stupid penalties keep killing this team. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference in the out come of the game but did Dockett really need to get an unsportmanlike penalty when the Cardinals had forced a 4th down? I’m a huge Dockett fan and I know he gets held on about 50% of all snaps but he really let the team down on that one. Instead of getting 3 points at a time when the game was still with in some sort of reach, he allows Seattle to get a first down and on the next play a touch down to put the game out of reach

3. Kurt Warner was forcing the ball down field to try and make things happen, but the 5 INT’s just killed us today. I really don’t blame Kurt on two or three of them, but on two others he just air mailed it to the other team. The passing game is very shaky right now with Boldin out, Fitzgerald slowed by his injury and the other guys trying to step in. With out a real tight end to throw too the check down options are pretty slim and he was under constant pressure all day. Which brings me to…

4. Levi Brown. My god man could you at least try holding Kearney or something? Look, I know Levi’s a rookie, but it’s the 13th game of the season and we took him FIFTH in the NFL draft. You don’t see Joe Thomas getting schooled like this, or Tony Ugoh in Indy. Before all you Brown apologists get on my back, remember, i’m not the genius that reached up at the 5th pick and took this guy. He was a good first round prospect but not a top 5 player, particularly with Adrian Peterson on the board. Today exposed him for what he probably is, an average NFL tackle who is going to need a tight end to help him with the elite pass rushing DE’s. Kearney must be buying his hotel reservations in Hawaii for the Pro-Bowl a year in advance now that he gets to go against Levi twice a season. I’m sure Levi will have a decent NFL career but watching him today just made you sick when you consider the salary cap implications of his draft position for the next 4 years.
5. Special teams. It’s trick or treat as usual with our special teams. You get some good Breaston returns, a covered on side kick, but then you have plays where there is no coverage at all and a punter who lets the ball fly through his hands on a clean snap for a safety.

In summary, why oh why do we have coaches for this team put tag lines out there ( you got a winner in town) when they come in that comes back to haunt them? “Tough, smart, disciplined football.” As i’ve said before, this team is definitely tough, occasionally smart, but a long, long way from disciplined. Too many flags, mistakes, coverage errors and screw ups to beat a team like Seattle at home.

They have three games left and will probably have to win them all to get the wild card at this point and with the injuries piling up the glaring lack of depth in the secondary, DE and at tight end is coming back to haunt them. I don’t know if they have the horses to pull it out, but next week in New Orleans we will see if the Cardinals can put together another miracle must win effort to stay alive in the play off race.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 5:52 pm and is filed under game analysis, Regular season, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.