THE STORY: Whatever test the visit of the defending Super Bowl champions was going to provide the Cardinals on Sunday, the answers weren’t going to be the final grade of 2026.<\/p>\n
Yet the frustration was going to hit, after a game in which the Seattle Seahawks broke out their excellent defense and spent the afternoon at State Farm Stadium suffocating a group that had shined just seven days before.<\/p>\n
The final was 31-7 \u2013 it was 7-7 at the half, remarkably \u2013 and the Cardinals (1-1) had less than 100 yards passing.<\/p>\n
“I felt we had a good grasp of the game,” coach Mike LaFleur said. “When you play really good teams, you don’t have to do the extraordinary. But you’ve got to do the ordinary extra.”<\/p>\n
That didn’t happen enough on Sunday. Not enough conversions on short-yardage situations, not enough second-half stops, not enough to defend star Seahawks wide receiver Jaxson Smith-Njigba, who had nine catches for 155 yards and three touchdowns.<\/p>\n
The Seahawks (2-0) didn’t look like a team struggling with the absence of starting QB Sam Darnold, playing instead Drew Lock. But last week, the Cardinals made sure to emphasize their win in Los Angeles didn’t define the season, and they certainly weren’t going to think any differently postgame this week.<\/p>\n
“It’s fool’s gold,” quarterback Jacoby Brissett said. “If you let one week determine how you feel, you’re already behind the 8-ball.”<\/p>\n
As good as the offense had been against the Chargers, it was not against the Seahawks. The reality was that, until running back Bam Knight broke off an 18-yard carry on the next-to-last snap, the Cardinals did not have a play longer than nine yards, including through the air.<\/p>\n
Tight end Trey McBride had a TD and eight catches, but for only 41 yards. Marvin Harrison Jr. was shut out, and the top trio of wideouts \u2013 Harrison, Kendrick Bourne and Michael Wilson \u2013 had a combined four receptions for 29 yards.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard to push the ball,” Brissett said. “It was hard to find completions today.”<\/p>\n
The Cardinals had just one drive of more than 32 yards.<\/p>\n
“I put that on us,” left tackle Paris Johnson Jr. said of the offensive line. “Because when the pocket is clean Jacoby is bound to throw for 300, 400. We have Jeremiyah Love and (Tyler) Allgeier and we know when we pave the way those guys can go all the way.”<\/p>\n
An emotional goalline stop by the Cardinals in the first half was one of the reasons the game was tied at the break. But the Seahawks got lucky when they recovered their own fumble on the opening kickoff of the second half and got a huge secondary gain with the loose ball \u2013 more on that below \u2013 and eventually ended up scoring on all four of their second-half possessions.<\/p>\n
The final Seahawks TD drive was 16 plays, 15 of them runs, although the Cardinals nearly had a second goalline stand on the final snap.<\/p>\n
“Seattle is a really good team, and I think if you don’t play to their standard or better, you’re gonna lose,” defensive lineman Darius Robinson said. “Until we can figure that out, you know, it’s the outcome.”<\/p>\n
The measuring stick said what it said Sunday. The Cardinals were insistent on their ability to wipe this quickly. “We can’t let Seattle beat us twice,” LaFleur said, in terms of affecting next week’s game. And it wasn’t going to wipe away all the good feelings built up until Sunday.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if test is the right word,” defensive lineman Roy Lopez said. “because we are a good football team. We’ve got the right mindset, we have the right guys, and we all believe in each other.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE STORY: Whatever test the visit of the defending Super Bowl champions was going to provide the Cardinals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1006697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[375,390,2604,1327,1054,1051,7,1053,1052,88,6,17569,131753,126057,131365],"class_list":["post-1006696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arizona-cardinals","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-cardinals","tag-arizonacardinals","tag-cardinals","tag-darren-urban","tag-featured-articles","tag-football","tag-home-page-news-headlines","tag-mega-feed","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-postgame","tag-postgame-coverage-2026-regular-season-week-2","tag-red-sea-member-hq-content","tag-seattle-seahawks-at-arizona-cardinals-2026-reg-2"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117308428351949979","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1006697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}