Arizona Cardinals fly south in the NFC standings for the Winter

One Quarter into the NFL season, there remains only one team without a victory, and surprisingly, it’s not the Cleveland Browns. Instead, it’s the rebuilding Arizona Cardinals at 0-4. Listed at the bottom of many Power Rankings, the Cardinals have produced the least amount of offense, and have lacked the clutch in defense and special teams that was present back in 2015.

The offense has been led by aging, future Hall-of-Fame Wide Receiver Larry Fitzgerald, and underperforming Running Back David Johnson. Sam Bradford was signed in the offseason to give experience to rookie Josh Rosen on how to play QB successfully. However, he led the Cardinals to a whole 20 points in 3 games, and if you take off their first quarter against the Bears, they scored 6 points in 11 quarters with Bradford at the helm. Bradford has been demoted to third string behind both Rosen and Mike Glennon.

Enter Josh Rosen, the standout QB prospect from UCLA who fell behind the likes of Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, and Josh Allen to #10 in the 2018 NFL Draft where the Cardinals traded up to get him. Rosen has shown quite little in his short time so far in Arizona. Trusting him to be the starting QB for the rest of the season will likely be disastrous.

A big instance of the Cardinals lack of clutch on Defense and Special Teams was their Week 4 loss to the Seattle Seahawks. Cardinals Kicker Phil Dawson missed a 45-yard field goal late in the 4th quarter, and the defense allowed the Seahawks to drive down the field for a game-winning field goal of their own, which was from 52 yards.

This team is definitely not anywhere near the 2015 Cardinals, who reached the NFC Championship game that year. They’re suffering many player losses: former QB Carson Palmer retired, WR Larry Fitzgerald nearing retirement, FS Tyrann Matthieu leaving for the Houston Texans and standout DE Calais Campbell leaving for the Jacksonville Jaguars. It’s clear that this Cardinals team won’t be winning much of anything soon and shouldn’t be making much of a push to do so.

So when will they get their first win? They actually have a good shot this week against the lowly 49ers. Who, as I mentioned before, have lost QB Jimmy Garoppolo to a torn ACL. They follow that up with tough matches against the Minnesota Vikings and the Denver Broncos. However, they do have some other games they can win: Week 8 vs. the 49ers, Week 11 vs. the Oakland Raiders, Week 14 vs.the Detroit Lions, and Week 17 at the Seattle Seahawks. When do you think the Cardinals will get their first win? Do you think they could go 0-16? Reply with your thoughts below!