Patriots’ defense gets leg up on Cardinals’ offense
The Cardinals offensive woes are two weeks old now, and they are as smelly and unappetizing as Thanksgiving leftovers on a Monday.
In the NFL, one performance can be written off as anomaly. But consecutive ones constitute a trend, and it’s clear after the Cardinals’ 20-17 loss to the Patriots Sunday that coach Kliff Kingsbury better address it before something stale turns rancid.
In losses the last two weeks to Seattle and New England, the Cardinals scored 21 and 17 points and finished more than 100 yards under their average.
A unit that piled up yards and points through the first half of the season now can’t gain a yard when it’s needed most.
The offensive recession is the biggest reason a 6-3 record is now 6-5, and that a team that looked like it was ready to turn a corner three weeks ago now is stalled with its emergency blinkers on.
Pondering what’s wrong prompts a buffet of questions.
Is the shoulder injury quarterback Kyler Murray suffered against Seattle keeping him from running as much?
Are teams keying on Murray in the run game?
Is it Kingsbury’s play calling?
Is it failing to execute in basic situations?
Is it the tendency to wilt in those handful of moments that determine the outcome of most games?
All the above?
If you’ve watched the last two weeks, you know the answer. And the current state of the Cardinals offense was never more apparent than on the final possession of the first half.
With a nice, creative mixture of runs and short passes, the Cardinals, leading 10-7, moved from their 28-yard line to the Patriots 10 and eventually inside the 1-yard line.
Kingsbury’s decision to go for a touchdown from fourth-and-inches on the final play can be debated by reasonable people, if they exist anymore.
I thought it was a good move, partly because a touchdown would have put them ahead, 17-7. And given the current state of the Patriots’ offense, that might have been enough to win.
But when the offensive line produced no push, Drake was stuffed, and the second-guessing of Kingsbury began in earnest.
The play that doesn’t get enough attention, however, was second and goal from the 8, when Murray threw a perfect slant to receiver Christian Kirk, who somehow let the ball slip through his hands in the end zone.
If Kirk makes that catch, as he usually does, Kingsbury has no decision to
make on fourth down. There are no questions about why a quarterback sneak with Murray is not in the playbook. Or why he didn't opt for a field goal and a 13-7 halftime lead against a team with a bad offense.
That play wasn’t specifically what Cardinals guard Justin Pugh was talking about afterward, when he said the Patriots made more big plays in big moments than the Cardinals.
But it fit the description, as did the failure at the goal line.
“So we’re going to look back and we’re going to be angry and we’re going to be upset,” Pugh said.
A larger problem for Kingsbury to address is that the Seahawks and Patriots had success in thwarting Murray as a runner.
Murray was averaging more than 63 yards a game two weeks ago. He gained just 46 the last two games and rushed only five times in each game, equaling season lows.
After the Seattle game, Kingsbury said he intentionally called plays that put Murray’s right shoulder in harm’s way less often.
But both Kingsbury and Murray insisted Sunday the playbook was not limited because of the shoulder. It’s just that the Patriots were concentrating on stopping him whenever the Cardinals ran the zone read option, they said.
“If they play me, I have to hand the ball off,” Murray said.
“I think I could have checked it down once or twice more than I did in the pass game, but other than that, there weren’t really any situations where I shied away from a hit or anything like that. Like I said, I wasn’t going to play if I couldn’t be myself.”
If that’s true, then it’s the Patriots defense that made Murray look different and the Cardinals offense look unlike the one we saw in the first half of the season.
If that's true, then Seattle and New England have given the Cardinals’ final five opponents a template for stopping Murray and what once was a beast of an offense:
Take the legs out from under it.