'No one's flipped the switch or anything' after Cardinals' 24-3 loss to 49ers

After the Arizona Cardinals lost 24-3 to the San Francisco 49ers on Monday night, there weren't a lot of positive to be talked about. "This was a big test for us tonight and everyone saw how it went for us," said head coach Ken Whisenhunt to the media after the loss. "We didn't get the job done."

The word he used to describe how he felt was "disappointed" and understandably so. The offense did not score a touchdown. The defense was not stellar.

"We had a lot of missed tackles. We had opportunities to get them off the field and we didn't do that. We didn't tackle very well, and everybody has to be held accountable for those things."

Offensively, they again struggled. They only rushed for seven yards, attempting to do so only nine times for the game. John Skelton was 32/52 for 290 yards, but that equates to about five and a half yards per attempt. That doesn't get it done in the NFL.

Is Whiz comfortable with the starting unit on offense? He sort of has to be. "I guess we don't have a lot of choices," he said when asked about whether he is comfortable with the personnel. "We're always looking to get better, but we have to so a better job of taking advantage of our opportunities when they are there."

Translation: There is no way to improve the personnel by bringing in other players. They just need to play better.

Whisenhunt was quick to defend John Skelton. "It was hard on John," when asked about his performance. He did note that he missed some throws and plays early. "He was under duress a couple of times, but he's tough, I'll tell you that."

But no one is hanging their heads or giving up. "Passion and effort were there," said Whisenhunt. "There's no quit in this team, we just didn't make plays."

Skelton thinks the team can still win.

"We did it earlier in the season. We were able to win. We were able to find ways to win. Not so much lately. We've just got to get back to those winning ways. Everything we're doing in practice, all the preparation, it seems to be the right thing. It's just not working on game day and we've just got to find a way and the answers are in our room."

In fact, he sounded a lot like his head coach. Whisenhunt sounded like a broken record last season when he talked about how he knew that what they were trying to do works.

"What we've done has worked before, our preparation and our game plan," said the quarterback. "We started the season 4-0. It starts with execution."

Offensively and defensively, they have to do more.

As much as fans might like to see changes in the players or rotations, there aren't a lot of things they can change in that sense. They have guys that have gotten hurt and that is affecting the team. Sadly the only way to fix things is to just try harder and do better.

They can do it. They were in a worse situation a year ago. They started 1-6 and turned things around. "That's good and that's bad," said Darnell Dockett. "Right now we have eight games to go and we're 0-0. We haven't done anything."

He's right. The Cardinals haven't done anything.

Fortunately, this isn't a team that will give up and mail it in. "No one's flipped the switch or anything," said Skelton. "We've just got to keep executing, keep grinding and hopefully we can get it turned around."