It's getting a little old watching the Arizona Cardinals play football -- it's so passe that I actually watched two periods of hockey yesterday just to see a successful Arizona sports team. The Cards continue to soil the bed on Sundays and have now lost five straight games against middling competition. Mental mistakes are absolutely killing the team.
After the first handful of games of the season, there were fans already saying, "Same old Cardinals!" and I refused to buy into that, thinking the culture here had been irreversible changed with the arrival of Ken Whisenhunt. But I'm starting to ease up on the positive mumbo-jumbo. After watching this bumbling group get shellacked by the Seahawks (x2), Vikings, Buccaneers and Chiefs -- with their main adversary being their own brain-dead mistakes -- the 2010 Cardinals are definitely bringing back memories of the "good old days" of Sun Devil Stadium Cardinals football.
Anyway, since the games these days are mostly exercises in terrible football, these good/bad posts are going to probably turn into "random thoughts about the game" posts that mostly focus on the bad, since there's really not been a lot of good.
- Please hurry back, LaRod Stephens-Howling. You're this team's best source of offense and you play on special teams. Sigh.
- I still can't understand coach Ken Whisenhunt's play-calling. This team has no choice but to be a strong running team. It's not winning with the pass. It may not win with the run, either, but now that the team's playoff hopes are basically dead, it's time to see if Beanie Wells is the real deal or if he's just another complementary back and they have to go find another ball carrier. The running game was actually kind of effective against Kansas City, too. Although Wells and Tim Hightower only ran for a total of 101 yards, they did so on only 20 carries for a 5.1 yard average.
- Trumaine McBride's punt coverage mistake is a one-play microcosm of this entire season. The opportunity for success was right in front of him and he fell asleep. It's a familiar refrain.
- Yay! Derek Anderson avoided turning the ball over again! (If you don't count a completely ineffective offense that couldn't keep any significant drives alive.)
- Anderson passed for what may be the most meaningless 295 yards ever. That's a lot of yards with only four third-down conversions and one garbage-time touchdown.
- Anderson continues to leave receivers open for injuries with his ridiculous overthrows. In attempting to catch some of these errant lobs, Early Doucet suffered a concussion and Steve Breaston was shaken up.
- To be a little fair to DA, a number of receivers also had the dropsies on Sunday.
- Again, I really wish this division wasn't as terrible as it is so the Cards could face reality and look towards 2011 instead of holding onto hope of getting into the playoffs. Unfortunately, they are not mathematically eliminated, so they're going to keep on with their futile pursuit of victories instead of developing young players.