RedAlice":1nlge12m said:
Popeyejones":1nlge12m said:
kearly":1nlge12m said:
Stanton had a solid second half at home against an ailing 49ers D, but on the whole he's been pretty terrible. His completion rate is more than 20% lower than Austin Davis'. That's ridiculous. Stanton's YPA is pretty bad too.
I am amazed the Cardinals are winning games while being so depleted.
Agreed.
And yet: they ARE.
Pop: your opinion? Is it coaching? or?
Three major things IMO, none of which are coaching and all of which just come down to luck/chance:
1) Through 12 quarters played so far the Cardinals have led through 4 of them. They've been leading at the right time across three games, but that's unsustainable.
2) They've been lucky in facing opponents who are atypically bad at exposing their weaknesses as a team. By way of example, Stanton is a hot mess under pressure. He's terrifyingly bad. He's lucky to have one of his two starts come against a 9ers team that has been as bad as can be at generating pressure so far this season, as well as a Giants team that was sixth worse in the league at generating pressure last year, and only in the middle of the pack this year because they got to play the Cardinals (they're averaging 1.5 sacks per game in their other two games, which over the course of an average season would make them last in the league).
3) They've also been pretty lucky with regards to their opponents making unforced errors, which is not a sustainable way to win, and which you can't give the Cards any credit for:
*In Week 1 the Chargers were about to go up in the 4th quarter until an errant snap from a backup center pushed them out of field goal range.
*In Week 2 Rashad Jennings was completely untouched and gave up a fumble in the red zone in the 4th quarter, and Victor Cruz had three driving killing wide-open drops on chunk plays in the second half.
*In Week 3 the 9ers are clearly a mess right now, and also penalized themselves into oblivion and gave the game away (this game is also kind of an outlier because the Cardinals were just losing for the majority of it, rather than almost all of it).
Basically, I don't think they're nearly as good as their record, or nearly as good as they were last year.
Until I see them be able to at least somewhat consistently 1) run between the tackles, 2) have a passing attack that doesn't fold like a chair under pressure and/or 3) be able to generate any pressure in the pass rush even while relying on elaborate blitz schemes which expose their coverage units, I'm just not going to believe in them.
Long story short, I think the path to the division is wide and clear right now, regardless of the Cardinals' record.