Arizona Cardinals: Starters struggle against Bears
By Scott Allen
The Arizona Cardinals starters play into the second quarter against the Chicago Bears
Well, after their third preseason game I would say the Arizona Cardinals starters are not regular season ready. Both sides of the ball, plus special teams, struggled through their performances for the most part on Saturday evening.
The Bears were able to run the ball on the Cardinals first team defense with fairly good success. Bears running back Tarik Cohen ran the ball 11 times for 77-yards in place of the injured Jordan Howard, who did not play.
Cohen was able to rattle off a 25-yarder and was consistently able to dissect the Cardinals defenders. The Cardinals will not have much success allowing opponent backs seven-yards per carry.
The Cardinals offense also struggled. They couldn’t run and Palmer was having issues getting time to throw his passes. Palmer did go 9-14 for 67-yards. He was able to connect on a one-yard touchdown to tight end Jermaine Gresham.
Running back David Johnson carried three times for three-yards. Chris Johnson didn’t fare much better with eight-yards on four carries.
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Both the offensive line and defensive line looked like dumpster fires quite honestly. Guard Mike Iupati looked slow, looked like a guy on his last legs.
Also not looking very good were tackles D.J. Humphries and Jared Veldheer. Now to be fair, Humphries hasn’t played this preseason up until this point, so he gets a pass this week.
A couple of starters who did look good were safety Tyrann Mathieu, who grabbed an interception of Bears quarterback Mike Glennon and ran the ball back 52-yards. Defensive lineman Robert Nkemdiche also looked spot on once again, a lone star on the defensive line.
You can’t blame Arians for leaving the starters in the game into the second quarter. That may have been by design. However they played so poorly in the first quarter you have to think performance had something to do with that.
A lot for the Cardinals to digest going into next week. They will spend the last two games of the preseason on the road.