Hawks46 wrote:I'm not disagreeing with you guys, I'm just saying that Arizona is somewhere around 24th vs. the run. Now, it can mean a few things, like they are so good against the pass, that teams are forced to run. Their offense is truly terrible, and teams are never that far behind then that they have to pass a lot and scew the stats.
We can run on them though, since we're a good run team. Now, they're going to stack the box, but if we can keep them off balance, run when they think pass and vice versa, then we will be fine. I just would like to see us either make them hesitate on their favored A gap blitzes, or keep them off balance enough to telegraph it, so Wilson can audible into a bootleg, screen, or read option. If we can catch them blitzing the middle, and hit them outside, we're going to get some big plays and hurt them.
On defense, I'm curious to see how much pressure we'll get on them. If we can't get pressure on this team, at home, then our personnel just aren't working. We base our defense off of getting good pressure by the front 4. I'm thinking we'll see some blitzes by them.
I wouldn't expect the Cards to lie down. This is a division rival, the teams don't like eachother, and they've owned us the last few years. At 0-3 in the division, it's time to start punching division rivals in the face.
Look a little beyond that 24th ranking. They are actually pretty far ahead of us, only giving up 4.1 yards per rush, compared to our 4.5. So yeah, it is the fact that they have been behind a lot, and that the constant blitzing does leave them open to a big run or two.
We had the same issue last year, our run D was really good, but our run D was lower ranked than it should have been precisely because nobody respected our offense.