Arizona Cardinals: Grades vs Chicago Bears

The Arizona Cardinals weren’t perfect on Sunday but they didn’t need to be against the Chicago Bears

The Arizona Cardinals scored 14 points in every quarter except the fourth when they scored just seven points.  Their defense gave up 20 of the Bears 23 points in the first half and just three in the second half.  The special teams got the scoring started just 12 seconds into the game.

Clearly not everything worked on Sunday but even the things that went wrong appeared corrected by end of game.  The offense, defense, and special teams all made mistakes in the midst of their 48-23 victory over the Chicago Bears.

Here are the grades for each phase of the game on Sunday.  I can’t be too harsh given the large margin of victory but there are things that need to improve before next Sunday’s game against the San Francisco 49ers.

Offense:

The Cardinals threw the ball just 24 times on Sunday against 28 rushes.  That is the balanced attack I referred to last week in the lead up to Sunday’s game.  I didn’t think there would be more rushes than passes, especially with running back Andre Ellington out but 20 carries for Chris Johnson for 72 yards and David Johnson carried the ball five times for 42 yards and a touchdown.  Over 100 yards as a team two weeks in a row.

As for the passing game, quarterback Carson Palmer had things in check.  He was just fine thank you.  He went 17-24 for 185 yards and four touchdowns.  The four touchdowns gives him seven for the season already.  He did throw an interception that probably didn’t need to be thrown as the Cardinals tried to pile on in the first half but it was a great play by Bears defensive end Jared Allen as well.

The star on offense though belonged to receiver Larry Fitzgerald.  He caught eight passes for 112 yards and a career-high three touchdowns.  Hard to believe it was his first three touchdown game ever.

Also let’s give props to the offensive line, shall we.  With injury to Mike Iupati, suspension for Bobby Massie, and the struggles of first-round pick and inactive D.J. Humphries, all of a sudden the offensive line was a concern coming out of a poor preseason.

However, as I told people the last two weeks of camp and preseason, that was the preseason.  Things change.  Now we sit after two weeks without a single sack of Palmer.  How about that?

Grade: A