Brad Cesmat
NFL Football comes down to just a couple of simple items, health and luck. Avoid injuries, get some bounces, play teams at the right time(more on that in a moment) and you can have a team that doesn’t look like a Super Bowl contender at the start of a season, show up on the field for the final game.
Your hometown heroes have the ingredients for a team that can go a long,long ways. But they, like most others, are going to need more than just a little bit of health and luck to put together a season worth remembering.
I could just jot down a few notes about Carson Palmer playing at a level that he hasn’t achieved before, and I’d be done with a preview for the season.
No need to do “clickbait” headlines or have story after story saying Palmer has to play at a high level. We go it. Not that hard to figure out.
David Johnson says he wants to go for a thousand yards rushing and a thousand receiving. That sounds good, reads good, and would produce millions of page views. Too bad it’s not in the best interest of Johnson or the Cardinals to have so much tied up in one player. Wear and tear catches up in 2017 faster than 10-15 years ago. David Johnson is not Marshall Faulk.
Larry Fitzgerald caught over 100 balls last season. Nothing wrong with that, except that the other receivers were almost non-existent.
Winning organizations like New England and Seattle are constantly shuffling the deck to add to the offensive output. We haven’t seen much of that here in Arizona the last two years. To me the Cardinals are simply saying “last years season was an aberration, we just missed a few kicks and our special teams were horrible, we will bounce back in a big way.”
Defensively, Tony Jefferson bolted Arizona for Baltimore and Calais Campbell backed up a brinks truck in Jacksonville. Jefferson is the bigger loss.
Tyrann Mathieu has that innate ability to make everyone around him better. IF he bounces back, then the Cardinals defense were raise itself to another level. Can he stay clear of injury it the question. Look, I go could on and on through the roster, I don’t think it’s a bad collection of talent.
The “Luck” part of the equation in 2017 are items like when do they face a team. Remember in last years opener they didn’t have to play against Tom Brady and yet still found a way to lose to the Patriots. That simply can’t happen.
Here in 2017, there may be NO LUCK in game two at Indianapolis. Andrew Luck is injured. There’s one break. Gotta beat the Colts without Luck. Could Dallas be without running back Ezekiel Elliott in week 3? Good chance that could be the case. Through the course of a 16 game schedule there are going to be weeks where you catch a team at the right time. Can the Cardinals take advantage of the good fortune given to them.
This could go really well for the Cardinals or it could end very badly. Health and luck, it’s not that hard to see a NFC West winner or a division bottom-feeder here in 2017.
