CARDS UPSET SEAHAWKS
Many contribute to win over Seahawks
SEATTLE – There’s an old saying in the NFL that any team is just a few weeks away from being in crisis.
The opposite is true, too.
After beating Seattle, 27-13, at CenturyLink Field on Sunday, the Cardinals are still in last place in the NFC West, but they are in a far better place overall than they were three weeks ago.
They’ve gone from a team that had lost six straight games and was staring at a nine-game streak to finish the season, to one that’s won two consecutive games and nearly doubled its win total from a year ago.
On Sunday, they won under difficult circumstances. Against a playoff team. In a noisy stadium. And with their starting quarterback, Kyler Murray, missing nearly all of the second half with a hamstring injury.
After a disastrous outing three weeks ago against the Rams, the Cardinals have
“It was just the perfect call at the perfect time.” Coach Kliff Kingsbury On Kenyan Drake’s 80-yard touchdown run
been a different team against the Browns and the Seahawks the past two weeks.
“Since then, guys made a decision to get back to the grind, work hard and finish this deal off the right way,” coach Kliff Kingsbury said. “It’s a show of the hard work and the focus that’s paying off, knocking off the top seed in the NFC.”
It was a long, crazy, eventful game, the kind where a defining moment in the first quarter is relegated to a footnote by what follows.
Credit, like blame, often should be distributed more evenly than it is, and that was the case Sunday for the Cardinals. For one of the few times this season, it was hard to know where to start with the Cardinals.
Kliff Kingsbury
Let’s start with the first-year head coach. It’s clear he has kept his players’ trust despite the six-game losing streak and the blowout loss to the Rams after an off week.
He’s done it with steadiness, intelligence and innovation.
Above almost all else, NFL players judge coaches by their ability to give them something that works. On Sunday, Kingsbury did that by listening to his offensive assistants, who wanted to tweak a running play previously used.
On the Cardinals’ fourth play, Kingsbury called it. Seattle gave them the defensive look they expected, along with a run blitz. Kenyan Drake found a large hole on the right side of the line and ran through it 80 yards, untouched, for a touchdown.
Just that fast, Seattle’s touchdown on its first possession didn’t look so damaging.
Kingsbury credited his staff for their input on the play.
“It worked pretty much the entire game,” Kingsbury said of the play. “We’ve run versions of it, but that was kind of a new wrinkle. It was just the perfect call at the perfect time.”
Brett Hundley
As a backup quarterback, Hundley didn’t throw a pass all last year while with the Seahawks.
He had thrown just one this year with the Cardinals, but the Cardinals needed him to come through when Murray left with a hamstring injury with about 12 minutes left in the third quarter.
Hundley did. He completed only four of nine passes, but one of those was for 28 yards. More importantly, he rushed for 35 yards, nearly all of it coming on a touchdown drive in the fourth quarter.
“Have some fun out there,” is how Hundley described his attitude. “Man, I haven’t ran like that in a minute. I need an ice bath but I got a little juice.”
Murray said he felt tightness in his right hamstring after a scramble and was honest with the medical staff about how he was feeling.
“I wouldn’t put myself in any situation where I couldn’t be myself, play
my game,” he said. “I didn’t want to put the team in jeopardy by putting myself out there like that.”
The severity of Murray’s injury hasn’t been determined, but it would be surprising to see him play in the season finale next week against the Rams.
Kenyan Drake
The running back, obtained through a trade at midseason, rushed for 166 yards, the second consecutive game he’s gone over 100 yards and the third time overall as a Cardinal. He’s scored six touchdowns in the past two weeks.
An unrestricted free agent after the season, Drake rubbed his fingers together after one touchdown, as if to say, “Pay me the money.” On another, he appeared to be opening a safe or a vault.
“My girlfriend told me I really didn’t come hard enough last week (after) touchdowns with my celebrations,” he said. “So I thought I’d bring something out.”
Drake said he wasn’t touched on the 80-yard run, and the key was outrunning safety Lano Hill, who appeared to have an angle at one point.
“I just knew I needed to find an oxygen tank,” he said. “That’s all I was worried about.”
The defense
The Seahawks were missing some offensive linemen. By halftime, they were down to one running back.
So what?
The Cardinals defense had been maligned all year, deservedly so, but it probably played its best game of the season on Sunday.
The Seahawks scored only 13 points.
Outside linebacker Chandler Jones had four sacks, giving him 19 for the season and breaking his franchise record of 17.
Most importantly, when the Cardinals needed a stop, its defense usually made one. That hasn’t been the case most of the year.
“We finally started to develop an identity as a defense,” said safety Budda Baker, who led the Cardinals with nine tackles. “There have been games where guys drive the ball to tie or beat us. Today, that didn’t happen.”
Larry Fitzgerald
He gained only 48 yards on four catches, but one of those was a weird, 21-yard catch and run for a touchdown. Murray scrambled on the play, stopped just short of the line of scrimmage and threw 2 yards to Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald tipped the ball to himself and sprinted to the end zone, barely making it.
He was all smiles after the game. He teased the journalist he’s known the longest, Larry Fitzgerald Sr., when Dad’s phone started playing a recording instead of recording his son’s voice.
“Can we get some professionalism here, please?” Junior cracked. “Are you OK?”
Center A.Q. Shipley nodded in Fitzgerald’s direction and gave the receiver credit for keeping the Cardinals together.
“I think guys see the way he comes to work every day,” he said. “You know he’s never going to quit. So that makes the guy on the left and right of him, and the guy on the left and right of him, and the guy on the left and right of him. Then, you have 53 guys who don’t want to let that guy down.”