The 1-0 Arizona Cardinals head east to face the 1-0 Washington Redskins in this week 2 match-up. The Cardinals are coming off an exciting win against the Carolina Panthers, while the Redskins are coming off an impressive win against the New York Giants.
It is well known throughout the league how poor the Cardinals are when they have to head east for a game. I still have nightmares from that 2008 season where the Cardinals went 0-5 and got outscored 202-102 when playing teams on the east coast. Despite our poor performances, that is a child's excuse for not winning and something that needs to change if the Cardinals are ever going to be considered a legitimate NFL team.
Cardinals offense
The Cardinals offense will go into this week hoping to improve on what they did last week. There were great performances by Kolb and Beanie as well Fitzgerald and Doucet. The Redskins defense is without a doubt better than the Carolina Panthers and combine that with them being at home, I think we could see Kolb under more pressure this Sunday. Ryan Kerrigan and Brian Orakpo will be bringing serious heat and it will be interesting to see how the Cardinals plan to counter this. It wouldn't surprise me to see the Cardinals do some more 5 wide receiver sets in order to spread the defense out and allow Kolb to make the hot read and get the ball out quickly. Beanie will need to have another solid game in order to help us open any potential play action and the offensive line will need to generate enough of a push on run plays as well as keep the pocket intact on passing plays. Kolb will also need to do a better job of staying inside the pocket and stepping up instead of running outside. I see some sacks and maybe an interception due to the pressure they will generate, but I also see our offense being able to move the ball and keep us in the game.
Cardinals defense
This defense looked absolutely brutal on Sunday and they will need drastic improvement if they are going to be able to stop the Redskins. The league finally came out and admitted that the Richard Marshall hit on Cam Newton was legal, which means it shouldn't have been flagged. This is one thing that I think the league really needs to look at as it's starting to really frustrate me and other fans. This game is so fast and the hits look so brutal the referees, being human just assume that it had to be an illegal hit or at minimum that the hit was too rough or unnecessary. Anyways, two plays after the non illegal hit, the Panthers score so you could theoretically say that those 7 points didn't exist but fact is they did. Whether or not the play shouldn't have happened, it did and we gave up the points. In order to be successful this weekend, the Cardinals must generate a more consistent pass rush. We got to Cam a couple of times and almost sacked him a couple of other times but they were usually when we were bringing tons of pressure and leaving our secondary on their own. With elite or above average corner backs that's usually not as big of worry but when you're starting a rookie and a second year undrafted free agent, this will ultimately lead to big plays especially if the blitz can't get there in time. Not to mention we have Adrian Wilson who is below average in coverage and admits he likes to peak in the backfield to try and jump a short route and is unable to recover in time when he sees it's a pass down field. If we're going to be bringing 6 guys, Adrian has to play straight up defense and cover his given zone and I think he will start doing that from this moment on. In zone coverage, everyone must stay in their area, because when they don't it's usually a different player who ends up looking bad(ala Kerry Rhodes last weekend). I'm not sure if we're going to try to focus on stopping the run as we did against Carolina or try to drop more into coverage to try to stop the pass attack. It will be interesting to see what approach Horton and the gang take into this game. One thing we all have to remember is that there was a shortened off-season, we're implementing a new scheme and have young guys like Dan Williams, O'Brien Schofield, Daryl Washington, AJ Jefferson and Patrick Peterson who are all in their first or second year and are expected to have a major impact on our defense this year. This defense will need time to gel and hopefully with more playing time and more experience they can improve. I'm not saying that they will without a shadow of a doubt improve and become a solid defense, but we also can't expect this many new guys to come in and be successful with a new scheme.
I am really excited for this game and will be cheering my heart out hoping for a win, but in the end I just don't see it happening this weekend. While I think we'll see an improvement on defense, we still have a lot of young guys at key positions and the Redskins offense looks like it belongs in the NFL. I think it'll be competitive, but the Cardinals will fall.
Redskins 24, Cardinals 17
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