The Arizona Cardinals were back on the practice field Wednesday preparing for their Week 2 game against the Washington Redskins. It should be an interesting early season test for both teams who are full of confidence and convinced they are much better than their records showed last season. The winner will roll into Week 3 with legitimate momentum while the loser, depending on how the game goes, could potentially suffer a significant set back.
For the Cardinals, the offense is suddenly not the big area of woe that it was all last season. Kevin Kolb has solidified the quarterback position and even there's even confidence in the two backups should they need to step up.
Larry Fitzgerald suffered through a full season of QB mess, but it sounds like that's all in the past.
"Last week I was encouraged by the way Kevin (Kolb) was able to get the ball to everybody. I think that's good for offensive guys to know -- if you win (your match up) consistently, Kevin's going to find you and I think that's going to make guys work a lot harder," Fitz said.
Kolb is looking forward to playing against the Redskins and taking on both a team he knows well from his time with the Eagles. He called the Washington front seven, "legit, as good as anybody." They are aggressive and do unique things, according to Kolb.
Like any of the Cardinals we spoke with, Kolb's not satisfied with the way the team played last week but having studied the game film is not discouraged.
"I think the mistakes we made were very simple when you go back," Kolb said. "It's just slowing the game down and just thinking about things. That's going to come with time. That's going to come with more games and again, it's something we can fix very easily."
Tim Hightower to-do
At some point this week Tim Hightower committed the media sin of speaking what was on his mind. He said that he thought the team he now plays for would beat the team he used to play for. How this qualifies as news escapes us, but it prompted all sorts of questions to various Cardinals about Hightower's remarks.
The responses all sounded something like this from Clark Haggans: "It's a game. We just want to get to another win."
Although the best answer came from Ken Whisenhunt who said, "If I was him, I would be looking forward to facing our defense the way we played last week as well. Hopefully, we'll get a little better this week."
Other notes
- LB Reggie Walker has shown tremendous improvement since he got here as an undrafted free agent according to Whisenhunt. Healthy now with no nagging injuries like he's had in year's past.
- "Listen, what we're trying to preach with our guys is we've got to play a disciplined scheme. That's what hurt us last week and our guys have got to learn that." -- Whisenhunt
- "There's a lot of negatives packed up against us but I think that's pretty much our style and we like it that way. It's very important for us to go in there and play well and win...I think we have an underdog role here anyway. That's kind of our mentality." -- Kolb
- "We're excited to play against this team. They really played with a lot of energy last week against the Giants. They have some great emotional leaders on defense so it will be a really good test for us to go out on the east coast and try and get a victory." -- Fitzgerald
- "I think we have a lot to build on. By no stretch of the imagination do we feel like we played good...We know we have to execute our assignments." -- Fitzgerald
- "They're very fast. They're quick off the ball. They play very up-tempo. Between the run, the pass, the play action, they do execute with a lot of precision." -- Clark Haggans
- "I know we won the game but we left some plays out there. Made some mistakes. We're just out there today trying to clean that up and just play better." -- Haggans
- "We're fine. We'll move on to the next game. Leave last game behind us and learn from it." -- Adrian Wilson
- "No excuses. We'll move on to the next game and leave that game behind us. We're not going to make a big deal of it. We'll let you guys do it." -- Wilson
- "They're a good football team. They're going to try and run the ball and take shots down the field just like every other team." -- Wilson