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Cardinal Sin
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The only team that FPI pegs with a greater chance of making the Super Bowl is the only team that has managed to outscore the Patriots so far this season. You may have noticed the Cardinals sneaking into the table of greatest season-opening three-game offenses above, and in fact, Arizona has been an unholy force so far this season. The Cardinals have posted a plus-77 point differential through three games in 2015. That’s the seventh-best figure since the 1970 merger. Four of the six teams with better point differentials than this Cardinals team through three games made it to the Super Bowl, and FPI gives the Cardinals a 41.2 percent chance of following those teams to the big game.
Now, this is awkward. The Cardinals were
supposed to decline this year. It’s not even a quarter of the way into the season, and we don’t have to go far to think about a Cardinals team that got off to a dominant start before falling apart, given that the 2012 team started 4-0 before losing 11 of its final 12 games. It’s also simply inaccurate to compare those two teams, and increasingly, it’s becoming inaccurate to compare what the 2014 Cardinals looked like to this 2015 version.
The easy story is that the 2015 Cardinals are what the 2014 Cardinals would have been if Carson Palmer hadn’t gotten hurt. Given that the Cards were 6-0 with Palmer last year and have started 3-0 with Palmer in 2015, one can see why that story makes some sense. On a point basis, though, they’re playing dramatically better:
Year Palmer Record PF/Gm PA/Gm Diff
2014 6-0 25.8 16.8 9.0
2015 3-0 42.0 16.3 25.7
That’s not the same team. That 2014 Cardinals team, outscoring the opposition by nine points, would be one of the best teams in football in a typical season. They would be like the 2014 Patriots, who outscored their opposition by 9.7 points per game. The 2015 Cardinals would be the best team in NFL history. They would take the 2007 Patriots, who outscored their opposition by 19.7 points per game, and throw another touchdown on for good measure.
And this is mostly happening with the same personnel, at least among the players who were around when Palmer was in the lineup. Arizona’s top two offseason acquisitions haven’t played; former 49ers guard Mike Iupati has missed the first three games after undergoing knee surgery, while first-round pick D.J. Humphries has been a healthy scratch at tackle. The Cardinals got suspended tackle Bobby Massie back for Sunday and have made changes at halfback, with the 2014 version of Andre Ellington swapped out for a combination of rookie David Johnson alongside Ellington in Week 1 and free agent Chris Johnson afterward. Chris Johnson, who floundered in free agency for months, ran for 110 yards and two touchdowns on Sunday.
Otherwise, though, this is basically the same team getting 16.2 points per game more out of its offense with Palmer under center than it was a year ago. How are the Cardinals doing it?
Dominating the red zone. San Francisco became the first team to stop the Cardinals in the red zone this season, with Arizona kicking a field goal solely because there was one second left on the clock at the end of the first half.
The Cardinals have now scored 11 touchdowns and one field goal on 12 trips to the red zone this year, meaning that they’ve averaged 6.6 points per red zone possession in 2015.3
That’s otherworldly. It’s also not entirely insane, given that the Cardinals were really good in the red zone with Palmer in 2014. They averaged 5.3 points per red zone possession with him in the lineup, scoring 10 touchdowns and four field goals across 15 trips. With Drew Stanton and Ryan Lindley at the helm, Arizona took 23 trips to the red zone and scored just six touchdowns and 13 field goals, averaging just 3.6 points per possession. That’s almost the difference between the best red zone offense in football over the entire season (Oakland, 5.7 points/possession) and the worst (Jacksonville, 3.8 points/possession). It’s a small sample size, and red zone performance tends to be inconsistent from year to year, but it’s impossible to say that the Cardinals aren’t much better in the red zone with Palmer at the helm.
Getting return touchdowns. It’s hard to credit Palmer for this one, but the Cardinals have been taking extra trips to the house with their quarterback on the sideline. Last year, across their 16-game slate, the Cardinals produced five return touchdowns. Two of those were by Antonio Cromartie and Ted Ginn, who are no longer with the team. That’s not an unreasonable number, and there was little reason to think the Cardinals would be particularly above-average or below-average on returns in 2015, given that return touchdowns are also almost entirely random from year to year.
Things have changed. The Cardinals already have four return touchdowns in
three weeks. They picked up two in Week 2, when David Johnson returned the opening kickoff for a score before Tony Jefferson took a Jay Cutler gift to the house. They added two more in the first quarter on Sunday, when Colin Kaepernick threw ugly interceptions to Justin Bethel (playing his first defensive snap of the year) and Tyrann Mathieu for easy pick-sixes. More than nine points per game of Arizona’s offensive improvement have come from return touchdowns alone.
Now, I think even the most aggressive Cardinals fan isn’t going to suggest that Arizona will grab two return touchdowns per week the rest of the way. But creating takeaways is a skill, and the Cardinals could very well be good at that. Mathieu, in particular, is clearly healthier and more productive than he was a year ago. It also helps when the other team makes it easy for you:
Keeping Palmer healthy. The most important thing the Cardinals could have done heading into the season was ensure that Palmer was healthy for as long as possible. That was hardly a guarantee, given that the former Bengals star has a long injury history and was coming off of a season that included nerve damage in his shoulder and his second torn ACL. The Cardinals made those aforementioned moves to beef up their offensive line, but as I noted, both Iupati and Humphries haven’t taken a single snap.
Turns out that it hasn’t mattered. Despite Palmer’s average pass going a league-high 11.1 yards in the air, the Cardinals have done an incredible job of keeping him upright and unmolested. Palmer has had 2.68 seconds to throw before his passes, the fifth-longest rate in the league. And he’s been sacked just once across 91 dropbacks this season, producing a 1.1 percent sack rate that’s the second lowest in football.
Again, it’s probably fair to say that they won’t keep this up, but it’s a question of degree. A 1.1 percent sack rate would be right there with the 1988 Dolphins for the lowest figure in modern league history, but the Cardinals can decline some and still do a great job of protecting Palmer. It’s hard to figure that they’re going to get worse as a pass-blocking unit when Iupati debuts and replaces Ted Larsen at left guard. Palmer was sacked on 3.8 percent of his dropbacks last year; if the Cardinals can improve on that figure, it’ll be a job well done for Bruce Arians & Co.
Can the Cardinals keep this up? Well, it depends on what “this” is. The Cardinals will probably not continue to cash in on 90 percent of their red zone trips with touchdowns or score two return touchdowns a game or allow Palmer to be sacked once a month. They’re probably not going 16-0, either, though I’m not sure even I would listen to me doubt the Cardinals right now.
If “this” means being one of the genuine best teams in football, though, the Cardinals can certainly keep that up. Even if they slip in those aforementioned categories, this offense is playing at a high enough level and is joined by an impressive enough defense that the Cardinals are going to be tough to stop. Their schedule admittedly hasn’t been especially tough so far — their three opponents are a combined 1-5 in non-Cardinals games this season — but when you’re stomping each challenger by nearly four touchdowns per game, it doesn’t matter. The 2014 Cardinals looked like they were going to regress in 2015.
The 2015 Cardinals, at least through three weeks, don’t look anything like even the best version of the 2014 Cardinals.
