Next three weeks key for the Arizona Cardinals

Winnable, but not gimme games set the team up for a bye and Seattle in Week 10.

The next three weeks will be key in defining where the season will go for the Arizona Cardinals as they’ll take on teams that are either floundering or hovering around .500 as the team makes it to the bye, hopefully riding a two-to-three game lead over the rest of the division.

As it stands now, the Cardinals have a two game lead over the Seahawks who they have not played yet. Carolina handed Seattle another loss at home in Week 6 meaning the ‘Hawks fall to 2-4 and mirror the Cardinals 4-2 record. With tiebreakers and all that jazz thrown into the mix, the Cardinals could have a three game lead going forward.

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As you can see, the schedule is pretty similar for both teams with only a few differences. Arizona does not face Carolina, which Seattle did last weekend, or Dallas this season, but does take on the Eagles instead. Seattle only has one early game remaining on their schedule, Arizona has three.

Both teams also have the same bye, meaning both will have two weeks to prepare for each other, and depending on how the next two weeks go, we all hope that the Cardinals don’t drop two and the Seahawks pick up two wins to basically make the Week 10 match-up for the division, much as it was last season in that forgettable game in the northwest.

The Cardinals have to take care of business for the next two weeks, with Cleveland showing signs of life and Baltimore being gobbled up by turf in Santa Clara the time is now for the Cardinals to do what they did the first three weeks of the season, beat lesser opponents, build up big leads and put the league on notice. Who cares if they are beating teams that don’t have a winning record. They’re playing against other professional football players, these guys beat out the 37 guys who were cut at the end of camp.

The key is to win the next two weeks, show the league how you do it, and make it into the bye as healthy as can be, use the week off to get read and prepped to go up to Seattle and show the Seahawks that the division now goes through Glendale, but to do that they need to focus, not get ahead of themselves, and as Bruce Arians puts it, execute. Don’t make costly mistakes, don’t blow your coverage, and don’t assume anything.