The Cardinals’ season won’t officially end for another couple months, but its fate was sealed on Sunday afternoon.
The Seahawks were supposed to be in teardown mode this year, but they were the ones acting as the wrecking ball at State Farm Stadium, pulverizing the Cardinals’ already-fleeting playoff hopes in a 31-21 win that swept the season series.
Arizona is now three games and a tiebreaker behind Seattle for first place in the NFC West, and its odds to win the division have lengthened to an insurmountable +5000 at BetMGM. The Cardinals are 10/1 longshots to make the playoffs in any capacity, a tough pill to swallow for an organization that had Super Bowl dreams just a couple short months ago.
As the Cardinals return to their Tempe practice facility for another week of soul-searching, everyone wants to know: Who is to blame? Well, I’ll tell you.
Owner Michael Bidwill
The first person to point the finger at sits atop the organization.
Michael Bidwill kickstarted this calamity when he made the incredulous decision to give coach Kliff Kingsbury and GM Steve Keim contract extensions through 2027 this offseason.
The Cardinals imploded late in 2021, and despite a steady increase in wins since Kingsbury’s hire in 2019, it was clear to all that 2022 was going to be the pivot point for this group. Well, clear to most.
Now those extensions hang over every judgment of the team, with fans and media left to wonder if the money Bidwill recently allocated to Keim and Kingsbury will stop him from firing the duo, even if it is the prudent football decision.
Even in the weeks following the new deals, Bidwill’s confidence in his coach and GM didn’t translate to an opening of the coffers in free agency. There are ways to manipulate the salary cap if an owner is willing to foot the bill, but the Cardinals added no outside impact players of note on the open market when they should have been going all-in for a championship with quarterback Kyler Murray on a cheap rookie contract.
The free agency inactivity resulted in holes at the key positions of edge rusher, offensive line and cornerback, and those three spots have indeed been areas of weakness in 2022.
We all watched teams like the Eagles, Dolphins and Chargers push their chips in this offseason, and they are reaping those rewards. The Cardinals were mind-bendingly passive, and that is on Bidwill.
General Manager Steve Keim
The next place to lay blame is on Keim. While he should have been given more money to spend in free agency, the contracts he chose to dole out were the wrong ones.
Running back James Conner, tight end Zach Ertz and wide receiver A.J. Green were all re-signed at premium rates, despite the likelihood that all three would regress from a year ago. Conner has been hurt and mostly ineffective, Ertz fine but not worth the big contract, and Green a figurative ghost all year.
More than that, the trio was always a peculiar fit in Kingsbury’s offense, which is predicated on getting his skill athletes in space. (It doesn’t work that great when the players have less athleticism than the defenders covering them.) At least with second-round draft bust Andy Isabella, there was a cogent plan for his usage in the offense, even if it didn’t work out.
Speaking of the draft, the Cardinals have gotten very little from their rookies, which was particularly noticeable against a Seahawks team that is thriving in large part because of myriad first-year players succeeding from the jump.
It’s been a recurring theme from Keim throughout his tenure, and while trades covered up holes in recent years, you eventually run out of salary cap space to keep that up. In the end, it’s the lack of draft success which has doomed this team more than anything else.
Coach Kliff Kingsbury
The personnel is not good enough to contend, but Kingsbury also deserves his share of the blame.
The Cardinals look disjointed every single week. Not only has the passing game been awful this season, but in those rare times when it is clicking, a bad snap, a penalty or a timeout interjects to disrupt the rhythm.
I’ve criticized Pete Carroll plenty over the past couple of years, but Sunday’s game drove home an obvious point: Seattle is a well-coached team and Arizona is not.
Geno Smith decimated the Cardinals with bootlegs and quarterback run action. It’s the type of stuff the Cardinals should be using ad nauseum with Murray, but gets broken out sparingly compared to bubble screens and six-yard curls.
Murray fumbled in a big spot on Sunday, threw two interceptions last week and notoriously slid too early against the Eagles, so he is not blameless, but I don’t think he’s part of the problem.
The talent still sparkles through, just much less so than imagined this season. Murray can play in the Air Raid system, but at this point, I’d be very intrigued to see how he fits in a more traditional offense that gives him more help.
When an organization hits on a star quarterback in the draft, it’s not hyperbolic to expect a Super Bowl run somewhere between Years 2 and 5 of the build-up.
The Cardinals are in Year 4 with no playoff wins to date and 150/1 odds to win this year’s Super Bowl.
They will have one more shot at greatness in 2023 before Murray’s salary cap figure skyrockets, so there is still room to dream about Kyler, D-Hop and Hollywood Brown leading the way on a magnificent run.
But as this season continues to go off the rails, the question becomes: will Keim and Kingsbury survive to be around for that final salvo?
At the rate things are devolving, I doubt it.
