AIMING FOR PERFECTION
Negative plays a concern for Kingsbury, offense
The Arizona Cardinals are off to a 2-0 start for the season, but coach Kliff Kingsbury and most of his players aren’t satisfied at all.
“It was like negative 87 yards for us and it stopped drives and it put us in third and 15, third and 12 and third and 18 against one of the best D-lines in football and that’s no way to make a living.”
Kliff Kingsbury
Cardinals coach, on his team’s play on Sunday
When you’re striving for perfection in the NFL, ev- ery little negative moment can become as annoying as a pebble stuck in your cleats. Welcome to the Cardinals’ world, where life would appear to be merry and bright after a 2-0 start to the season, except that it isn’t.
Offensively, coach Kliff Kingsbury and most of his players aren’t satisfied at all. In fact, they’re downright grumpy about how things have operated from a rhythm and execution standpoint. They’re so thoroughly unimpressed, you’d think they were 0-2 if you didn’t know any better.
“I feel like we’re not really scratching the surface yet,” quarterback Kyler Murray said with a groan after Sunday’s 30-15 victory over Washington. “I feel like there’s a lot of work to be done. I feel like once we limit those penalties, limit going backwards, the negative plays, we can hopefully reach that full potential.
“There’s going to be negative times in the game, there’s going to be negative plays, but how you face adversity — we’ve got to handle that, we’ve got to handle situations, and bounce back.”
Bounce back? After posting 404 total yards of offense in their season-opening victory at the 49ers, the Cardinals followed with 438 total yards in winning their home-opener against Washington. It marked the sixth time Arizona has reached 400-plus yards in 18 games under Kingsbury. In the previous two seasons before he arrived, the Cardinals only did that once.
Not only that, Sunday marked just the second time in franchise history that the Cardinals posted 400 or more yards as well as 20 or more first downs in each of the first two games of a season. The only other time that happened was1976, three years before Kingsbury was born.
Kingsbury doesn’t care. According to his figures, the Cardinals had 14 negative plays as the result of penalties, stuffed runs, sacks and Murray’s lone interception. An acceptable number of those types of things, he said, is usually kept under five.
“It was like negative 87 yards for us and it stopped drives and it put us in third and 15, third and 12 and third and 18 against one of the best D-lines in football and that’s no way to make a living,” Kingsbury said. “Our players understand that. We have to take what we’re seeing on the practice field and practicing on the practice field and transition to the games and just execute at a higher level, and hopefully that happens soon.”
The Cardinals don’t have to wait long for a chance to, ahem, redeem themselves. They meet the 0-2 Lions on Sunday at State Farm Stadium and with a win, they can open 3-0 for the first time in five years. Imagine the self-critiquing they’ll do if they happen to lose.
Penalties have been Arizona’s biggest bugaboo. The Cardinals have been flagged 20 times for 199 yards in two games and the offense was responsible for 15 of those penalties for 133 yards. But it’s not as if the offense has been dragging down the rest of the team.
Arizona is ranked in the top five in the league in at least five different offensive categories and is in the top 10 in five others. But the Cardinals say they expect to be better. They said they left too many plays on the field in each of their first two games.
“I think we should have been better. I think we can be better,” Murray said, adding, “We practice hard, we expect to execute when we go out there on the field on Sunday. We left a lot out there and I think that was pretty evident to see.
“It’s frustrating at times, but at the same time, you’ve got to understand this is Week 2. We’re not where we hope to be yet, obviously, at the end of this thing. We got the win and that’s really all that matters. But yes, I feel like we can definitely be better.”
So does wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who leads the league with 22 receptions and ranks fifth with 219 receiving yards. Asked how high the ceiling is for the Cardinals’ offense once it finally gets rolling, Hopkins chuckled to himself and said, “We’ve got a very high ceiling.”
“There was a lot of stuff we left out there on the field, some three and outs we had, some drives we didn’t finish, some plays that I’m pretty sure Kyler could take back. There were some plays I wish I could take back. But it’s very early in the season. No preseason. Not a lot of time for us to go out live against another team. For us to be able to put up 30 points against a good NFL defense, it’s pretty good. But there’s a lot of room left for us to improve.”
Nobody’s perfect, but the Cardinals have high expectations and they will continue to harp on the negatives until there aren’t any. That’s why there wasn’t a huge celebration in the locker room, Kingsbury said, because the leaders on the team wouldn’t allow it.
“That’s what’s fun about being around this group is that they are mature, and they have an edge and they’re ready to get back to work,” Kingsbury said, adding there will be an extra emphasis heading into the Detroit game about limiting the team’s number of penalties, especially on offense.
“Yeah, we’ve struggled. I’ve said it earlier, that’s where we’ve been shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said. “To have 158 yards in negative plays the first two games of the season in the NFL and find a way to win, it just shows there’s a lot of room for improvement. But the margin of error is getting smaller and smaller and we can’t do that and expect to win games.”
Practice squad move
The Cardinals have signed offensive lineman Rick Leonard to their practice squad. Leonard, a fourth-round pick of the Saints in 2018 out of Florida State, spent all of last season on the Texans’ practice squad. He spent his rookie season on the practice squads of the Saints, Cardinals and Rams.