When it’s over, when you begin the painful process of tracing a team that was once on the ascent back to the moment when it all went wrong, it is often a process filled with hundreds of hidden, microscopic moments. An autopsy that takes place over years and, in the end, concludes in the unsatisfactory revelation that other teams have more good players.
But if the Cardinals fail to recover from Sunday’s loss to the Titans—much in the way last year’s Hail Mary win by the Commanders over the Bears completely rerouted the trajectory of two franchises, due in part to the comical manner in which Chicago lost with a defender completely turned away from the play in progress—the moment(s) will be pretty obvious.
The Cardinals were soundly beating arguably the worst team in the NFL on Sunday, up 21–6 when running back Emari Demercado dropped the football at the goal line with a little more than 12:30 to play in the fourth quarter, triggering a change in possession (instead of a 28–6 lead) and an 80-yard Titans touchdown drive.
The Cardinals were still beating arguably the worst team in the NFL at the 4:47 mark when an under-duress Cam Ward fired a missile at the outstretched hands of a Cardinals defender, tipping the ball to Arizona safety Dadrion Taylor-Demerson, who tumbled to the ground and had the ball punched loose. The ball then bounced off a teammate’s foot toward the end zone where … Titans wide receiver Tyler Lockett fell on said ball for a touchdown.
The Cardinals were still beating arguably the worst team in football after the offense got the ball back at the three-minute mark of the fourth quarter, with a fresh set of downs and the Titans down a timeout, when Arizona ran the ball three times for a total of two yards and punted it right back to Ward, who made them pay. The Cardinals ran the ball on a third-and-8 before the two-minute warning (meaning that running wouldn’t trigger the Titans to have to use another timeout), which at best seemed like a flawed strategy and at worst was a kind of public display of no confidence in Kyler Murray (in fairness to coach Jonathan Gannon, first downs were hard to come by at that point).
While the NFL viewing public is dangerously prone to hyperbole, it was arguably one of the worst losses imaginable (and this leaves out a shotgun snap that fired off Kyler Murray’s face in the third quarter that resulted in a turnover, though not one the Titans capitalized on); a collection of absolute silliness that was so disappointing and so head-scratchingly irreplicable that it either leaves a mark or gets dismissed immediately like some sort of drug-induced day trip in the desert.
And here’s where it really stings: The 49ers beat the Rams, one of the best teams in the NFL, with Mac Jones and a handful of bartenders on Thursday Night Football. Even in a loss to the Buccaneers, the Seahawks looked like one of the best teams in football. The Cardinals have wins over the Panthers and Saints, each of them by a touchdown or less. There is a long season ahead but a fairly concrete notion that Arizona is a tier below the rest of the NFC West at a time when many expected more.
None of this negates the fact that Arizona has respectably recovered from one of the franchise’s ugliest periods, a massive overreaction to one extraordinarily lucky 2021 season that preceded a full bottoming out. Gannon and GM Monti Ossenfort set the table for the kind of visible progression—four wins in 2023 when everyone assumed they would have the No. 1 pick in the draft, followed by an eight-win season last year—that led us to believe this was the season it would all come to fruition.
The same, terrifyingly, could be said for the three-, then seven-win Bears that came into last year’s Hail Mary game at a respectable 4–2.
This isn’t like Cinderella turning back into a pumpkin. It’s more of a settling, even if it seemed to happen in the most mind-boggling fashion. The Cardinals’ ascent was never going to be as tidy as we imagined, even with the addition of so many promising players.
Now the question becomes whether it really is over. Whether it peaked—at least in this iteration of the Cardinals. Whether this is the kind of loss that affected the Cardinals like it affected all of us, or if the team can somehow compartmentalize better. That’s an all-time challenge for Gannon, who doesn’t sound like a coach prepared to start the autopsy. At least not yet.
“Our sense of urgency and our connectedness is always there,” Gannon said at the podium. “It just needs to increase. Because time is ticking.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Cardinals Suffered the Kind of Loss That Can Completely Sink a Season.
