A LOSING HAND
Cards’ 2nd-half gambles prove fateful in loss
NEW ORLEANS — They walked in one at a time, almost all of them in single file, with faceless emotions and their heads down.
It looked like a funeral procession in the bowels of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Sunday until Larry Fitzgerald quietly waved to an acquaintance and Kliff Kingsbury patted A.Q. Shipley on the rump.
It didn’t have to end this way — with the Cardinals getting blown out by Drew Brees and the Saints, 31-9 — but isn’t that what most everyone expected to happen
anyway?
The Cardinals may have entered this game having won three straight, but they were double-digit underdogs.
They never had a chance, right? Wrong.
“We were in this game,” linebacker Haason Reddick said. “When it was 10-6 in the third quarter and we were only trailing by four, I knew we still had a chance. But then …”
Then the Cardinals and the first-year head coach, Kingsbury, decided to risk the odds. A decision to go for it on fourth and 1 from their own 30-yard line in the third quarter backfired and blew up in their face.
The third-down call prior to that got sniffed out and was ambushed as well.
That, and a lot of other things, didn’t work out in the Cardinals’ favor as the Saints turned it on during the second half behind Brees, who came back after missing five weeks following thumb surgery to pass for 373 yards and three touchdowns and thumb his nose at an intriguing team, but an inferior one nonetheless in the Cardinals.
“I was hoping this would be the week,” said Brees, who completed 34 of 43 of his passes. “This was kind if the week I had in my mind from the moment I got hurt. … As soon as I was able to grip it and rip it, I wanted to play.”
Even though word got out over the weekend that Brees had full intentions to start the game, there remained a possibility that backup Teddy Bridgewater would continue carrying the load. At least for another week with the bye approaching for the Saints.
The Cardinals game-planned for both quarterbacks just in case, but deep down, Kingsbury said he always knew Brees wouldn’t sit this one out.
“I did. He’s a great competitor, a Hall of Fame quarterback. I knew he’d want to play and be back sooner than anticipated,” Kingsbury said. “They’re a great offense. One of the best quarterbacks to ever play and a great receiver (in Michael Thomas) and a great offensive play caller (in coach Sean Payton).
“I thought our guys played hard. I’ll have to watch the film and see what went wrong, but they got rolling. They’ve won six in a row and they’re a good football team.”
New Orleans (7-1) waltzed its way over Arizona (3-4-1), not only because the Cardinals gambled on that ill-fated, fourth-down decision to run Chase Edmonds up the gut, but because the Cardinals had failed twice to score touchdowns earlier in the game when they got into the red zone, a problem they thought they had solved.
But there were other problems, too, like not being able to tackle and diving at ball carrier ankles instead of trying to wrap them up and bring them down. It didn’t help matters that the Cardinals also were playing without running back David Johnson because of a nagging ankle injury or that Edmonds went down, too, because he tweaked his hamstring in the third quarter.
The Cardinals were down to just one healthy running back at that point, Zach Zenner, who only a week ago was on the Saints’ active roster.
Fellow new addition Alfred Morris was available, but he was inactive and DJ. Foster remains out with a hamstring injury.
“Yeah, it was very unique,” said Zenner, who had one carry for no gain and caught one pass for 13 yards. “I just left those guys and then I just went to battle with these guys. I’ve just being trying to take it one day at a time, trying to soak up as much as I can whatever part of the playbook I happen to be in at the time.”
Kingsbury doesn’t know if Edmonds will be healthy enough to play Thursday night when the Cardinals return to a short week to host the 49ers. He said it’s too soon to know for sure if Johnson will be available or not, either, even though it was reported Sunday by ESPN’s Adam Schefter that Johnson isn’t expected to play, according to a source.
“There’s obviously a concern,” Kingsbury said. “We don’t have a back that’s been with us. We brought Zach in and Alfred, but not one that’s been with us so there’s definitely a concern.”
There’s even a bigger concern, according to Cardinals linebacker Jordan Hicks.
“What you can’t do in this league, especially on a short week, is let one game turn into two games,” he said. “After a game like this, you have to get rid of it. You have to move on for the 49ers because we have another great team, coming into our house, and we have to defend it.”
The Cardinals did a decent job defending Brees, Thomas and running back Latavius Murray during the first half. All the Saints could get through two quarters of play was an 8-yard touchdown run by Murray and a short field goal from Wil Lutz, who had missed one earlier in the game.
“Shout out to our defense,” said Edmonds, who was limited ti eight yards on seven carriers after rushing for 126 yards and three touchdowns a week earlier at the Giants. “I mean, they played their ass off, honestly. They did a good job of bend, but not breaking. We’ve got to find ways of helping them out.”
Kyler Murray (19 of 33 for 230 yards) and the offense could just never get it going against a very fast and aggressive Saints defense. For the fourth consecutive week, the Cardinals did not commit a turnover, but it wasn’t enough. Brees and his arsenal of weapons slowly got into gear, found a rhythm and took off.
“He’s definitely a tough guy to get to,” Reddick said of Brees, who had a pass intercepted by Patrick Peterson, but was not sacked. “He gets the ball out of his hands in like 2.7 seconds. I don’t know how some of these quarterbacks do it, but him, he’s a great one.”
Brees connected with Latavius Murray on a 15-yard touchdown catch and run and later, found Taysom Hill in the end zone for a 5-yard score and connected with Thomas on a 9-yarder to finish things off. Murray finished with a gamehigh 102 yards on 21 carries and Thomas caught all 11 passes thrown his way for a game-high 112 yards.
Before things got completely out of hand, Kingsbury smartly took Murray out of the game for backup Brett Hundley. Likewise, Payton did the same, replacing Brees with Bridgewater.
“I told him, it was crazy watching him just because I’ve been watching him on TV my whole life,” Murray said of his conversation with Brees after the game. “To see him up close and personal, it was definitely an experience. He just takes what the defense gives him and when the shots are there, they’re there. We’ve just got to be better as a whole.”