Bickley Blast: How do Cardinals stop with embarrassing performances?

Bickley Blast: How do Cardinals stop with embarrassing performances?

and bigly and Marada Mornings. Arizona sports, the local sports leader, Biggley Blast. The Arizona Cardinals coaching staff has a problem. Collectively, they are very inexperienced. They are not as good as their competition in the NFC West, and they are beginning to lose the civic trust built up over two years of tryhard football. Drew Ping’s ridiculous comments about the offensive line yesterday are just the latest example. So are the uninspiring press conferences from the head coach. So is the film study from Sunday’s loss in Seattle that shows a staff that did not have its team prepared. A staff that was resoundingly beaten in the film room. And more to the point, this is a staff with no senior adviserss and 12 coaches who had zero experience at their positions at the time they were hired by the Cardinals. Now, maybe that’s the function of an organ organization that simply will not spend top dollar for coaches or players. Maybe it’s also why the team is yet to produce a Pro Bowler from Monty Austin for its 28 draft picks because it’s a near certainty that most veteran coaches are probably a lot more adept at player development. Either way, this staff had better conjure up something good Sunday against the 49ers because this team has reached their annual quota of embarrassments already and it’s not even Thanksgiving. Yeah, I I wouldn’t say that. I think they’re playing hard. I I think we’ve played some really good fronts. I I think the communication has been good. I think at times, you know, you’re losing one-on- ones in critical situations, which is hurting us. Um, and certainly we need to evaluate how and why that’s happening and try to clean that up. Uh, but I do I think those guys play extremely hard. I think they play well together. I think they’re putting doing everything they can to win games. Uh there was the comments of Drew Petting uh yesterday offensive coordinator talking to the media out in Tempe when asked where is he seeing the offensive line struggling and kind of glazed over a lot of it other than losing one-on-one matchups. Well, that’s apparently happening a lot. This offensive line has not been close to as effective as it was last year. No doubt about it. Um Teao Mackey in terms of the film study put out some video that twice on the first four drives Cardinals left defenders unblocked on third and one. and Drew Petting said both were missed assignments. Quote, goes back to technique and where our eyes are. Key game against Seattle in year three of regime. You don’t expect to hear that kind of stuff. Um Drew Petting’s uh comments were were roundly ridiculed on social media because the difference in the quality of run game, the statistics are all out there. Last year they were one of the best teams at it. Now they’re nowhere near that team with basically the same offensive line. And so a lot of people have speculated, is it the loss of Clayton Adams? As Jared brought up earlier today, as I have brought up many times in the past, I was I was dumbfounded to think at any point in time 6 months ago that an offensive line and a running game coordinator could be that influential. Apparently he was. But that’s the thing is like apparently he was, right? Because we’re not given any other reasoning for this. It’s a lot of the same players. Yeah. And you can’t discount completely the injuries at the running back spot. I mean, they’re down on their depth chart at the running back position. I tend to believe uh success in the running game is more geared toward what the offensive line is doing as opposed to the running backs. With all due respect to running backs, James Connor has been phenomenal as an Arizona Cardinal. Uh he is in his fifth season as a Cardinal. His yards per carry by year, 3.7, 4.3, 5.0, 4.6. This year, short sample, injured in the third game, 32 carries, 95 yards, three yards per carry by far, by 7/10 of a yard. That’s the least yards per carry in James Connor’s. So it wasn’t like the offensive line was opening a bunch of holes for every for every they’ve struggled blocking for everybody in the run game. Yes. And so clearly when asked whether or not the offensive line has regressed, the answer is of course it has. It’s right there in the numbers. But Drew Petting said no, I don’t think so. And and that’s the kind of thing where Cardinal fans are like come on because he could have said exactly what you said. Yeah, the offensive line isn’t performing as well it should be. it’s regressed and it’s our job to figure out how to fix it. Uh there was other there was other film work that was very very uh perturbing and here’s an example. So one of the things the Cardinals have been doing well going into the Seattle game is they bring in Kelvin Beum at what I think they call the Y pos position. It’s a tackle that lines up in the wing so that tackle can go in motion. And what they’ve been doing is they’ve been running him over to the other of side of the field as they run play action which basically turns Kelvin Beichchum into a pass blocker on the other side of the field from where he is lined up to begin. Okay. So they come back out in the field Sunday against Seattle and they bring that formation out and immediately Seattle overloads the side of the field that Kel Kelvin Beichchum is initially on. And when he departs it, they bring a blitzer and when that blitzer was picked up, they bring a guy right from the middle who comes in and destroys Jacobe Brassette. Fumble, touchdown. There you go. And what it tells you and what it tells people who study film is that the Cardinals kept with what they do with with what they do and did and were doing hoping it would work. And what the Seahawks did was come in with a game plan ready to detonate the Cardinals the minute they showed that look. Okay, just one example. And and look, I’m not I don’t break down film. I’m just citing what was out there yesterday. And you heard AQ Shipley tell us AQ Shipley played a lot of years in the offens on the offensive line in the NFL and he studies it because most people who watch football and even a lot of people who know a lot about football don’t watch line play very closely linemen do. And when he comes out on this show and says Seattle did some things that I’ve never seen them do before. Even a team that is known for exotic blitzes, they’re throwing stuff out that has never been captured on film before. That’s really, really good planning and really good coaching, right? And then they’re then there’s also the question of this coaching staff collectively in their experience. I mentioned that Rich Ganon, Drew Petting, Nick Rollis, all had zero experience at their jobs when they took them for two years. All three of those men uh received very high marks, Psing and Rollis, more so than Drew Petting. But over the first two years, I think Ganon and Rollis, I’m sorry, Ganon R. Yeah. For for the first two years, I think that people were like, “Okay, yeah, these guys are good.” The rest of the uh coaching staff, Israel Wolfk, Justin Fry, who’s now the offensive line coordinator and doing the job that Clayton Adams did last year. Um, Audrey Densson, Ben Steel, Winston Debo, the big defensive line coach, Christian Garcia, Matt Feno, I can’t pronounce Winston’s last name, by the way. Data Bud, I think you got it. Okay. Patrick Tony Ry. There’s a reason why they call him DV. That’s right. And so all those guys, zero experience at the jobs they’re doing when the at the time when the Cardinals hired them. And plus zero senior adviserss, plus no team president. So there’s not a ton of oversight going on here. And and whether or not these are issues or not, you can decide. But I’m just saying that year three, this is not what it should look like. Yeah. the other I mean there’s a lot discourage uh a lot of discouraging things to come out of the Seahawks loss but the step back perceived step back by Marvin Harrison Jr. in that performance too it’s not like Jacobe Brassette struggled to get him the ball it was 12 targets for Marvin Harrison Jr. The conversion rate on those targets was very low, 25%. Three catches on 12 targets. Here was Drew Petting on that subject. I think they, you know, they got some good players. There were some contested catches. He’s made a number of those throughout the course of the season. I, you know, there were a couple of those where they got their hand on the ball. You know, I think of the one there on fourth and goal is an unbelievable play to get back involved and get a hand on the football. And when you make those, you come out of the game saying you had, you know, seven or eight for a for a big game. And I thought those guys competed really well and made some plays on the back end. And another question about Marv posed to Drew Petting. Would you like to see him be a little bit stronger to the point of the tap on some? Always something we’re going to emphasize. Yes. Um, look, there’s a there’s a lot of truth in what Drew Petting said in that in that answer, especially the play in the end zone. Marvin Harrison Jr. nearly made a tremendous catch in the end zone. It was a really good individual play, but generally speaking, I think there’s been slight improvement in the area of contested catches this year from Marvin Harrison Jr. over last year. Mhm. But I don’t I I I I still can’t get to the point where I’m comfortable um with him playing the role of of number one wide receiver. That’s a that’s a role that you don’t have to think about on game day. You should in any of you don’t know which which guy’s going to show up from week to week right now. No. And and the level and once again it it I’ve been somebody who has correlated the level of heat that Marvin Harrison Jr. has felt on a football uh field um is attached to his comfort level and his performance. And it’s one thing to go up against a Dallas secondary that’s depleted versus a Seattle secondary secondary that was just out there looking to to knock people out. And clearly he was back to to some of the old issues that that he had. So yeah, it he remains a work in progress. It’s not what I expected. I really thought that that that moment in Dallas was going to be an a launching pad moment for MHJ. Yeah, but I mean just work in progress. Apply it to Marvin Harrison Jr. You just applied it to the coaching staff, too, which we didn’t think we would be in this work in progress mode in in year three of this rebuild. And you know this because I’m sure you hear from the same people I do that it’s creating some anxiety among fans um when it comes to what Jonathan Ganon is saying during media availability, what Drew Petting is saying, what this team is looking like and and how they rank up against these coaching staffs in the NFC West, which are all handfuls. Mhm. And a three and 12 divisional record shows that. Yep. Thanks for watching Bickley and Marada. Click to see the latest Bickley blast and hit the button in the middle to subscribe to Arizona Sports.

Dan Bickley wants to see the Arizona Cardinals play a much better brand of football than he’s seen so far before things really spiral out of control.

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