Third-quarter woes a theme for Cards
Whatever the Cardinals are doing at halftime is not working.
Through 11 games, the 2-9 Cardinals have been outscored 76-14 in the third quarter. They were shut out until Week 7.
Against the Chargers on Sunday, they had their worst third quarter yet. The Cardinals offense ran just three plays, gained just 3 yards and spent less than two minutes on the field.
Meanwhile, the Chargers scored 14 points on their way to a 45-10 rout of the battered birds.
The Chargers dominated in time of possession, holding the ball for more than 13 minutes in the third. That followed a dominant second quarter, in which they scored 28 unanswered points and forced a turnover. After Josh Rosen’s interception, the Cardinals seemed deflated. They wouldn’t bounce back.
“I think you could see a difference,” Wilks said on the start of the second half. “Whether you could feel it or not, you could see it. Because, again, we didn’t have that same energy that we had when we first started. Again, the miscues, the missed tackles, not getting enough push up front, not getting enough on third down, not connecting on third down.”
Wilks said he thought that palpable difference was unique to Sunday’s loss, but the third-quarter faltering has been consistent.
The Cardinals are averaging just 36.8 yards in the third quarter this season. They’ve only won the time-of-possession battle and outscored their opponent in the third once, both against the Chiefs.
“I really can’t put my finger on it,” said Wilks on why the third quarter has been such a disaster. “We make good adjustments. We talk about certain things at halftime, emphasizing coming out and playing fast. They went down and scored, and we came out and went three and out. It’s not what we anticipated nor expected.”
Clearly, the chance to regroup at the half has not translated into success on the field. Seven times, the Cardinals have either gone three and out or had a turnover on their first drive of the second half. They’ve converted just 18.5 percent of third downs in the third quarter, compared to 32.4 percent in the other three.
It could be that the comeback seems insurmountable. The Cardinals have only held the lead at halftime in three of their 11 contests this season. They went on to lose two of those games: against Chicago and Seattle. More often, they’ve trailed by double digits at the half, including by 32, 21 and, most recently, 18.
Accepting a loss while trailing at the half would indicate that this team is quick to give up. Wilks disagrees with that.
“I’m not an effort coach,” Wilks said. “If we’re coaching effort, we’re in trouble. The question yesterday was those guys’ effort. Watching the tape, you could see those guys still working hard, still trying to finish and still trying to do the things we ask them to do. So, I’m not concerned about the effort.”
On Sunday, specifically, part of the issue was Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers. Rivers was 28-of-29 on the day, stringing together pass after pass to keep Los Angeles on the field. The Chargers gained 150 yards in the third, scoring their second touchdown as the quarter expired.
His record-setting performance of consecutive completions ended in the third quarter, where he completed 9 of 10.
“A lot of his completions were to the back, checkdowns, quick throws,” Wilks said. “(We were) doing a great job in coverage, then he’s checking the ball underneath for high-percentage throws. That’s where a lot of those came from.
“You could see that in the number of yardage that they had because they weren’t throws over the top. We just have to do a much better job in coverage as far as converging on the underneath stuff and not missing tackles as we did yesterday.”
It wasn’t meant to minimize the record — Wilks was quick to note that Rivers is a future Hall of Famer — but it was an explanation on how a supposedly defensive-minded team allowed nine first downs in 15 minutes.
No one seems to be able to pinpoint exactly what’s going wrong for the Cardinals. Cornerback David Amerson admittedly has a small sample size, but he at least knows what’s going right for the other team.
“Teams go in at halftime, kind of see what’s going on, kind of see what the game plan is, make adjustments and all that. I think we’ve got to do a better job of doing that also,” he said. “I think we’ll be better in the future, hopefully.”
The third quarter has been bad, but so have most things for the 2-9 Cardinals. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to add halftime speeches on their list of areas to improve.