WHAT A WIN!
Kingsbury willing to take chances
Arizona Cardinals swarm Zane Gonzalez (5) after he kicked the game-winning field goal in OT on Sunday to beat the Seahawks.
The Cardinals are 5-2 and just beat the big, bad bully of the NFC West because they don’t care about what they’re supposed to be doing in any given situation.
Say what you want about what the offense should have done on fourth-and-goal from the 3.
Same thing goes for whether it was the right decision to kick the 41yard field goal on second down in overtime.
Or whether a defensive front with no linemen makes any sense whatsoever.
Those moves might have been unconventional, but they weren’t wrong. Conventional wisdom yields conventional results. If you want to be special, you have to be willing to be different.
And it’s cool if you don’t get it. Kliff Kingsbury does.
“I would do it 10 out of 10 times,” he said of the failed fourth-down conversion.
Conventional wisdom yields conventional results. If you want to be special, you have to be willing to be different.
Fourth-and-goal from the 3
Seattle (5-1) was up 13-7 about halfway through the second quarter. An easy field goal would have pulled Arizona to within 3.
But that’s the wrong way to read that situation.
Seattle had scored on its first three drives, the offense flowing more smoothly than pandemic traffic.
The Seahawks were poised to
score again when safety Budda Baker stepped in front of a Russell Wilson pass and returned it 90 yards to the Seattle 8.
Kingsbury knew that it was nothing more than good fortune that his team wasn’t down 28-7 with the ball on the Arizona 25 after a Seattle kickoff.
So he took conventional wisdom and shoved it in a conventional place.
He went for it on fourth-and-goal from the 3.
It was the Cardinals first failed fourth-down conversion of the season.
Kingsbury didn’t waver after the game.
“That’s the leading-scoring team in the NFL with, arguably, the MVP of the season so far,” he said. “You’re not gonna beat that team with field goals. We liked the play call, just didn’t get it done.”
A field goal on second-and-15
He didn’t have as much confidence in his decision to try for a 41-yard field goal in overtime on second-and-15 in overtime.
“I got conservative and went for the field goal,” he said.
“And then we were about to take a delay of game and had to take a time out, kind of freezed our own kicker. It was about as bad of a coaching job as possible by me.”
He’s right. It was awful. But look how he handled the mistake. He owned it. He didn’t make excuses. He just called it like it was and moved on.
That type of accountability is exactly why that was the right call.
For as long as Kingsbury is on the sidelines, he’ll make bad decisions. It’s part of the game.
But as long as he handles them headon, he’ll be able to grow from them.
Defense digs deep
As for the defense, the Cardinals gave up 27 points in the first half and only seven in the second half and overtime.
“We just had to dig deep,” safety Budda Baker said. “The Seahawks were doing some great plays, some plays that we haven’t seen before, and they were driving on us.
“For us, we always had to just think about fighting back. Next-play mentality. … It was a ‘W,’ that’s all that matters.”
True. But it’s also true that defensive coordinator Vance Joseph was willing to listen to his players and make adjustments. He got much more aggressive and eccentric with his calls.
“A couple games last year where we’d been in that same situation, and we just couldn’t execute,” cornerback Patrick Peterson said.
“This year, that was our point of emphasis,” he said.
“We’re a very good situational football team. We’re stopping teams where we need to and getting points where we need to.”
The secondary was getting torched on crossing routes in the first half. Rather than stubbornly stay with the same schemes, Joseph mixed it up, especially on third downs.
On Seattle’s first possession of the second half, Arizona forced a punt after Baker and Hasson Reddick squeezed Wilson on third-and-5.
The next possession, Peterson intercepted Wilson in the end zone.
In overtime, the Cardinals crammed linebackers and safeties along the line, and it was impossible for the Seahawks to predict who was coming after Wilson and who was dropping back into coverage. Offenses haven’t caught up to the 0-6-5 or the 1-5-5.
The first Seattle possession ended with a sack from second-year Arizona cornerback Byron Murphy. The next ended with an interception from Cardinals rookie linebacker Isaiah Simmons.
“It’s great for the young guys on this football team to know what it takes to continue to dig down deep while you’re in games,” Peterson said. “You’re never out of it.”
“This game gave us that confidence and that willpower to know that we can do anything … once we put our mind to it,” he said.
It started with Arizona’s willingness to be different, unconventional and even wrong.
And that’s exactly why they were right.
Kliff and Vance didn’t care about what they were supposed to be doing.
They were just out there getting it done.