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Normally, you wait until the end of the season before writing the obituary about an NFL team that failed to make the playoffs. In the case of the Cardinals, of course, their season died a long time ago.
They’ve already started looking ahead to next year and beyond. That became evident by Monday’s series of roster moves, which included releasing a pair of veterans in right tackle Andre Smith and defensive back Bene’ Benwikere and promoting rookie kicker Zane Gonzalez from the practice squad, which effectively ends the 20-year career of Phil Dawson.
Stop and take a long, hard look
Before they sweep the final five weeks under the rug and try to distance themselves from perhaps the worst season in their Arizona history, it’s important to stop to take a long, hard look at how the Cardinals got here, tied with the Raiders and 49ers for the worst record in the league at 2-9.
Critics can argue it might have started with the team’s decision to hire Steve Wilks as the new head coach. A defensive-minded longtime assistant, Wilks not only has struggled to get his players to make any sustained progress whatsoever, but it was also his decision to hire Mike McCoy as his offensive coordinator and completely disfigure what had been a Top 5 defense each of the last three seasons.
He accomplished the latter by switching from a 3-4 to a 4-3 base, doing so despite lacking the right personnel to play it, and then by hardly ever using it and relying almost solely on a five-defensive back system instead. It’s left the Cardinals in far too many exploitable situations. They’ve constantly been gashed by opposing rushing attacks and they’ve been extremely vulnerable on jet sweeps and short pass plays to the outside.
In the process, they turned their leading tackler from the past three season (Deone Bucannon) into a part-time substitute and they stunted the growth of yet another first-round linebacker (Haason Reddick) who also can’t get on the field with any regularity.

Say what you will about McCoy and much of his flawed playing calling on offense, but he was also hamstrung because of management’s decision to sign an overhyped veteran quarterback with one good knee (Sam Bradford) to an overpriced $20 million free-agent contract back in March. Not only that, but the Cardinals’ constant coddling of Bradford during offseason workouts and training camp clearly now prevented him from being ready for the start of the season.
Wrong time for discipline
Another devastatingly bad decision came during Bradford’s third and final start in a winnable 16-14 home loss to the Bears. It happened when star running back David Johnson watched from the sideline as rookie Chase Edmonds got blown up for a 3-yard loss during a critical third-and-two situation late in the game.
Wilks said it was the right call with the right personnel, but it wasn’t. Johnson, we learned, had been ordered to the sideline for a scolding by running backs coach Kirby Wilson for missing a blitz pick-up on the previous play. With a win hanging in the balance, it was completely the wrong time for a “teachable moment.”
It was a mistake how the Cardinals’ utilized Johnson for the entire first half of the season, for that matter. McCoy never got him to the outside where he could extend runs and he almost never lined him up in the slot or as a wide receiver, where Johnson can create so many mismatches.
Only now under interim offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich is that starting to happen with any regularity — except it still isn’t helping the Cardinals win any games.
Where are the receivers?
As for the receivers, the Cardinals should have known they were heading into battle without a sufficient mixture of proven talent. Instead, they broke camp with Larry Fitzgerald and a roomful of inexperienced kids and only one of those (Christian Kirk) looks like he might become a viable NFL commodity. Oh, they’ve brought in a handful of veterans here and there, but they’ve ended up cutting them before they even got a chance to play.
“When you sit back and look at so many different things, again, we’re 2-9,” Wilks said, explaining, “We can tweak every room and change a whole lot of things. We felt like coming in, we picked the best 53 (players).”
How about corners?
Except they didn’t. Bradford was a mistake, as was signing Smith to a two-year $8 million deal, along with every cornerback the Cardinals have trotted out to start across from Patrick Peterson, who didn’t help matters any when he demanded to be traded and made it public that he “desperately” wanted out.
“I think it’s real hard, period, to find a legitimate No. 2 corner throughout the league,” Wilks said. “You just don’t have them. When you start talking about cap situations there, it’s hard to pay two guys like that. You have to be able to hit one guy in the draft and have a young guy that you can develop.”

Mission not accomplished. Worse, the Cardinals also will now be on the lookout for a new No. 1 because Peterson almost assuredly will be seeking a trade come March 13, the start of the NFL’s official new League Year.
Not enough halftime adjustments
This season also went south because of the Cardinals’ incessant failure to make necessary adjustments at halftime. The fact that they’ve been outscored 76-14 in the third quarter of games and were shut out until Week 7 is damning proof of that.
So is the baffling ongoing problems with tackling or the lack thereof. It’s almost mind-blowing how frequently this team fails to wrap up and bring down ball carriers. They practice it every single day but come kickoff, it’s as if they forgot how to finish.
“It’s been a coaching failure across the board,” former Cardinals kicker Jay Feely said Tuesday during an interview with the team’s flagship radio station. “… A coach’s job is to find a way to utilize a player’s talents and they haven’t done a good job with that.”
Earlier this season when discussing the development of rookie quarterback Josh Rosen, former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer said he worried about the Cardinals’ lack of “been there, done that” leaders among their head coach and two coordinators (Leftwich and Al Holcomb). All three are in their first year on the job.
“It depends how you look at this Cardinals’ situation,” Dilfer told azcentral sports. “Do you trust the humans and their ability to fight through this, bond together, get stronger, endure and have grit? Or do you say, ‘You know what, that’s all fine and dandy but they don’t have enough intellectual property? They don’t have enough been there, done that. They don’t have enough pelts on the wall.’ And I can buy both arguments.”
Any way you look at it, it all adds up to 2-9 with a very realistic possibility of becoming 2-14, which would mark the franchise’s fewest wins in a season since 1959.
More roster moves
The Cardinals announced Tuesday the signings of cornerbacks Dontae Johnson and Quinten Rollins, as well as the release of cornerback Chris Jones. Johnson played in one game for the Bills this season after spending the previous four seasons with the 49ers, where he appeared in 63 games and made 22 starts — 16 last season. Rollins played in six games this season with the Packers, making one start. He had 17 tackles with two fumble recoveries. Arizona also re-signed Jalen Tolliver to the practice squad and released defensive tackle Vincent Valentine.
MORE SPORTS
- Arizona Hotshots reveal first look of new uniform
- NFL mock draft: ASU’s N’Keal Harry to the Cardinals?
- Cardinals’ third-quarter woes continue to be a season-long theme
- ‘See ya, Coach Wilks’: NFL pundits slam coach, team in power rankings
Reach McManaman at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @azbobbymac and listen to him live every Tuesday afternoon between 3-6 on 1580-AM The Fanatic with Roc and Manuch and every Wednesday afternoon between 1-3 on Fox Sports 910-AM on The Freaks with Kenny and Crash.
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