Props to who made this. Is that John Goblikon in the background?
No, it's his agent.
https://www.revengeofthebirds.com/2018/9/14/17857366/wrangling-the-rams-blueprint-for-an-upset
Wrangling the Rams: Blueprint for an upset
The Rams are favored by almost two touchdowns on Sunday. What will have to go right for the Cardinals to pull off the upset?
By John W. Buckley
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
I think most
Cardinals fans already have this game written off as a loss, but is an upset possible? Well, the
Raiders showed it just might be on Monday night. Yes, the
final score was ugly, but remember that the Raiders were actually up at the half and that it was a one-score game until about halfway through the 4th quarter.
So if Chucky and the Raiders can hang with the Rams, who’s to say Wilks and the Redbirds can’t? After watching a bit of Raiders/Rams tape (and trying my hardest to forget what I saw of the Cardinals last week), I started to see what the blueprint for an upset in L.A. might look like. Let’s go through the offense, defense, and special teams and see what would need to go right to get this team a monumental divisional win.
Passing Offense
The Raiders obviously had success throwing to the TE (
Jared Cook went 9/180), but had almost no success throwing to anyone else.
Derek Carr had 18 completions for 103 yards to his backs and receivers—good for a putrid 5.7 YPA. This… does not bode well for the Cardinals.
Outside of
Larry Fitzgerald, the Redbirds have an even weaker WR corps than the Raiders, and
Ricky Seals-Jones is a poor man’s
Jared Cook on his best day (and
Jared Cook is not a rich man in this metaphor). He can’t be counted on for anything close to the numbers that Cook put up, but I do imagine he’ll be more involved in the game plan than last week.
Carr did have 13 completions to his backs though. While most were of the checkdown variety, there may be some easy yards there for
David Johnson if the Cardinals’ O-line has trouble with the Rams’ pass rush (and they will). Speaking of the O-line, dumb penalties and sacks will have to be kept to a bare minimum.
All that said, an upset in the Coliseum likely won’t be powered by the arm of Sam Bradford. The Rams
want you to throw so their D-line can pin their ears back and rush the QB and their talented secondary can get their hands on the ball.
If Bradford is throwing a bunch on Sunday, I don’t like our chances—either it’ll be because we fell behind multiple scores again or Mike McCoy truly doesn’t know the talent on this roster. The key will be lots of safe throws to Fitz (although most throws to Fitz are safe), a few seam throws to RSJ, and plenty of action in the passing game for DJ. High-percentage passes, rather than going for big plays, and, obviously, no picks is the recipe here.
Key Stat: 30 attempts. If Bradford has many more attempts than this, something will have gone awry.
Rushing Offense
The Raiders RBs had a moderately successful day running the ball on Monday night—20 carries for 85 yards, good for a 4.3 YPC. Not world-beating numbers, but generally effective. But they went away from the run in the second half, getting pass happy even though the game was still close until the final 10 minutes. They attempted only 5 runs in the second half before a garbage-time drive when the outcome had already been decided.
Sound familiar? It’s basically the script the Cardinals followed last week. The team can’t afford to do the same thing this week. Go down a touchdown? Keep running the ball. Two touchdowns? Keep running the ball. Three touchdowns?
Keep DJ involved. That’s just what you have to do when your best player is a running back.
Now, I’m not saying to pound the ball futilely into
Aaron Donald,
Ndamukong Suh, and Co. over and over, but our game plan has to be built around
David Johnson. He can’t touch the ball just 14 times again. The only way we win this game is if DJ has a big day—and you know he’s capable of doing it.
Key Stat: 25 touches. If we can get DJ at least this many touches, we’ll have a shot. Closer to 30 would be even better.
Passing Defense
This phase of the game is, to me, the key to the upset. If we can contain
Jared Goff (imagine saying that 2 years ago…), we’ll be right there in it. But this is a tough, innovating passing attack to stop, one that uses everything from delayed HB screens and WR bubble screens to designed rollouts and deep bombs off play-action. The Raiders weren’t really able to stop any of it as Goff put up an efficient 74.2 QBR.
Our secondary is much stronger than theirs, however. Our CBs generally held Washington’s WRs in check—but then,
Brandin Cooks,
Cooper Kupp, and
Robert Woods are much more talented than Washington’s WR corps. Cooks especially gave the Raiders fits—5 receptions for 87 yards and two huge PI penalties (totaling another 87 yards).
I expect
Patrick Peterson and Bené Benwikere to do their jobs and lock down two of those guys when they throw downfield (and hopefully pick off at least one pass), while the third figures to have a big day against likely weak link Jamar Taylor. As long as
Chandler Jones and the pass rush can get home on some of the long-developing pass plays they run, we can live with Taylor getting beat once or twice.
But what worries me is stopping their horizontal passing game, especially when they throw to their RBs. Washington’s less-talented RBs absolutely gouged us last week, and if we’re going to pull off the upset, we’re going to need to contain
Todd Gurley and
Malcolm Brown in the passing game.
We really need guys like
Tre Boston and
Deone Bucannon (or,
potentially,
Haason Reddick) to step up this week. Hopefully Wilks and Holcomb coached these guys up in practice this week.
Key Stat: 0 pass interference penalties. If they beat us through the air once or twice, fine, but to win, we can’t give away yards.
Rushing Defense
This phase is fairly simple. Gurley is going to get his. But they key is making him work for his yards. That means setting the edge and not letting him break for big gains off tackle, as team speed on defense has been an issue since preseason.
We need our OLBs and CBs (especially Peterson) to funnel everything back to our DTs and
Josh Bynes (
a bright spot last week) in the middle of the field, forcing Gurley to grind out yards up the middle. And, needless to say, wrapping up when you get your arms on him is a must—no missed tackles.
Key Stat: 4.0 YPC. If we can hold the Rams under this number, the defense will have done its job. We were actually close last week against Washington, but
Chris Thompson really hurt us on his 5 carries. Hopefully Brown doesn’t do the same this week in a similar role.
Special Teams
If we manage to pull off the upset, special teams will have played a huge role. Teams were a strength last week, but the Rams are even stronger in this phase than we are on our best day with the leg strength and accuracy of
Greg Zuerlein and
Johnny Hekker, as well as dangerous return man Pharoh Cooper (update:
Cooper was put on the IR).
We’ll have to hope we can at least play to a draw in this phase, with
Phil Dawson hitting all his kicks,
Andy Lee flipping the field, and
Christian Kirk breaking another big return—because you know their Rams counterparts are going to do just that.
We’ll more than likely need one more big play than them—a blocked kick, a muffed punt recovery, a return into plus territory. Thankfully, this phase looks much improved from years past for the Redbirds.
Key Stat: 0 missed FGs. If we have a chance to come away with points, we can’t leave empty-handed.
Final Thoughts
The odds are long, but that doesn’t mean we have to automatically write this game off as a loss. I mean, no one saw the Bucs beating the
Saints last week, right? But a lot of things will have to go our way. Here’s the TL;DR version:
- Bradford needs to play smart, efficient football. He doesn’t need to put up big numbers for us to pull off this upset.
- We do need DJ to put up big numbers though—something like 150+ total yards on 25+ touches. The offensive gameplan has to go through him.
- Our CBs need to contain their downfield passing game without committing any big penalties, while hoping our LBs/safeties can limit the damage in the short passing game. Make them dink and dunk.
- Todd Gurley is going to get his yards, but we need to make him work for them. Keeping him at or under 4.0 YPC is key.
- Finally, we need to play to a draw on special teams—and have one big play go our way.
If we’re talking about a massive Redbirds upset on Monday morning, it’ll be because all or most of these things happened. But if we’re talking about Bradford’s inefficiency, a porous run D, and penalties again, there’s no doubt this team will be heading home 0-2 and in need of some serious soul searching.
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Lotta good points here. To these, I would just add that LA is a better, more complete team at this point. To get an upset, we need to keep the LA offense off the field as much as possible, force multiple turnovers, score on defense and score in the return game. If we do these things, and our offense can chip in a couple scores and not turn it over, we should win. Easier said than done though
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AZ can win this game if they play the way they're capable of playing
Though I’ll be happy so long as they just look good and keep the game close. Hopefully we see DE Markus Golden and possibly Olsen Pierre , those two would provide a big boost defensively. The Cardinals need to contain TG and the run game and get after Goff hopefully hitting a lot early n often.
The offense needs to look much better. Hopefully Gresham is back, due to their poor ILB play they should use both RSJ/Gresham and David Johnson a lot in the passing game. I think the Cardinals are going to perform much better in wk2 though it’s going to be hard to get the W.
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It's the NFL
Any team can beat any other team on any day. It’s all comes down to execution. Cards executed poorly last week and were thoroughly out coached as well. It’s as if they just weren’t ready to run whatever "system" they were supposed to be running.
Rams are talented and are also executing pretty well… a good scheme designed to neutralize their strengths that is executed well by the players is possible. But we don’t know what we got yet, we just know what we think is possible.
Seems like this is the type of game Cards find ways to win. There’s plenty of motivation as they’re given zero chance to even make it choose, plus they’re coming off an embarrassing performance last week.. plus it’s a division foe, players on both sides always get up for these games.
Even when the Rams sucked.. they still played us tough cuz we know each other so well.
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In fact I was watching the Raiders in the first half, running the ball against the Lambs, and thought: "Damn, boys, I hope you WATCHIN’ this!!"
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The Raiders have arguably the best OL in the NFL.
Ours is not in the same league at all. Going to be a long day.
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Former Ram fan, Card's fan now.
I grew up a Ram’s fan. Had season tickets in Anaheim for years. I watched Georgia Frontiere run that team in to the ground and move them to St. Louis. It was a tough pill to swallow, but I still rooted for them. Then the whole Kurt Warner story. He fast became my favorite player ever. Then he broke his hand, and the Rams kicked him to the curb, and went with hall of famer Marc Bulger.
Anyone remember him? That was the last straw. I quit the Rams. I actually rooted for the Giants the year that Kurt played QB for them. Then again he was let go for Eli, and he landed in AZ. Been a Cards fan ever since. I can’t stand the Rams now.
I was at Kurt’s last game in AZ against the Rams, and he lit them up! This is tough week for me, because I hate them! That being said, they are going to kick the crap out of the Cards. That was probably one of the most unprepared, poorly coached teams I have ever seen last week.
Todd Gurley is going to have a huge game. We can’t stop the run. It’s going to be ugly. It’s going to be a long season. I hope I’m wrong, and I will come on here and be the first to apologize if I’m wrong…but I highly doubt it. Go Cards!
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Bradford wins this game he has earned his millions.
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