- SLUG: Sports-Cardinals Satisfaction,533
Photo Available
By KRISTINA VICARIO
Cronkite News
TEMPE – The Arizona Cardinals bounced back from a home-opening loss with a 40-7 blowout win Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a game in which the offense scored four touchdowns on 315 yards in the air and 101 yards on the ground.
But while the score depicted a stellar offensive effort, coach Bruce Arians was anything but pleased.
“The score doesn’t indicate how poorly we played offensively.” Arians said. “We can get a lot better. Communication was not very good in the beginning of the game and way too many mental errors, especially by a couple of young players.”
Arians specifically pointed to Cardinals second-year running back David Johnson, who led his team with 152 total yards, as the source of some of the unit’s offensive struggles.
“We should have had 50 (points),” Arians said. “We left at least 100, 120 yards and two touchdowns out there just on mental errors by David Johnson.”
These errors led to the breakdown of an otherwise solid pass protection, something Arians said he sees as the Cards biggest offensive strength.
“We had a couple of routes run wrong that made (Carson Palmer) pull the ball down and get sacked,” Arians said. “We (have) an easy touchdown, David runs the wrong route twice, Carson gets sacked.”
With a don’t-play-scared-play-smart coaching philosophy, Arians kept his team pushing offensively to the end, but said it should have been more strategic in running out the clock in the last nine minutes.
Arians patted special teams on the back for a standout performance. For the defensive effort, he gave the game balls to safety Tony Jefferson and cornerback Marcus Cooper.
His offense remained empty-handed.
“Nobody offensively,” Arians said.
Arians praised the defense on its four interceptions for 108 yards and a touchdown, but still said it should have had more.
“Defensively I thought we ran and hit hard and played very physical,” Arians said. “I thought we had really good pressure with the blitz and the front four, a good mixture…I was very disappointed with the first five minutes of the third quarter, about our defense missing the tackle on our screen pass and dropping the interception that stops the drive.”
However, despite the critical feedback, Arians said the second quarter, in which his team scored 24 unanswered points, was one of the best he’s seen in a while.
“I thought that was the best finish to the half we had in a long time on both sides of the ball,” Arians said. “The offense scores and defense getting it back and offense scoring again kind of really flipped that game around.”
Now, the Cardinals head to Buffalo to take on a winless Bills team Sunday. To Arians, facing an 0-for-2 team does not mean getting complacent after one 40-point barrage.
“You got to respect your opponent every week,” Arians said. “Buffalo’s got a ton of talent…you just watch the film, there’s enough up there to scare you. (Buffalo quarterback Tyrod Taylor) is playing extremely well, the defense is outstanding, and you just come to work today and get your work done and as long as we have the type of practices we should have then we shouldn’t have to worry about it.”
