Notes from the Nest: Aug. 21, 2014

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Full disclosure: I missed the first hour and a half of practice while helping out on Burns and Gambo, so there are probably things I missed. Hope you listened to the show and enjoyed it. On that note, here’s what I did get to see.

Of Note

– Kevin Minter, Jonathan Cooper and Max Starks were once again held out of practice.

– Tyrann Mathieu and Alameda Ta’amu, who were both activated from the physically unable to perform list Tuesday, got some work with the scout team against the first-team offense Thursday. For Mathieu, it was his first chance to get in on some tackling.

– Tony Jefferson picked off a couple of passes, and Deone Bucannon also nabbed an interception. While you can’t learn a ton from practices, it appears both have made great progress in the coverage department.

-Larry Fitzgerald caught a touchdown pass in what looked like the two-minute offense toward the end of practice.

Stat of the Day

In a 2007 Arizona victory in Cincinnati, then-Cardinals cornerback Antrel Rolle intercepted then-Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer three times, returning two of them for touchdowns. He scored on the third interception, as well, but the touchdown was nullified when Antonio Smith was called for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the return.

Quotes of the Day

“I knew he was tough as hell. We tried to knock him out; you could never knock him out. We know he had the freak injury in the playoff game. If he had not gotten hurt, I don’t know if we would have won the game. And he always had that tremendous deep ball. So yeah, I kind of didn’t know what kind of gym rat he was, but I knew he was tougher than hell and a really good thrower of the football. So now that we’ve got the gym rat, I really like it.” – Head coach Bruce Arians on if he knew what he needed to know about Carson Palmer before trading for him

“When you lose Karlos (Dansby) and obviously (Darnell) Dockett and Daryl (Washington), those are very difficult shoes to fill. You’re always looking to fill those shoes, but at the end of the day, I don’t know if you fill those shoes. There’s not a bunch of Darnell Docketts out there, there’s not a bunch of Karloses, there’s not a bunch of guys out there that are athletic freaks like Daryl was. But you make do. You find guys that can come in and play and bring different things to the defense, bring different qualities of leadership, playmaking abilities. Offensively, you look at it and we say we need to be kind of the backbone, we need to be counted on to win games at the end of the games. We’ve got to pick up and continue to improve week after week. Who knows how the season’s going to shake down, but we need to be ready offensively, to be ready to carry.” – QB Carson Palmer on the offense having to pick up the slack with all the missing pieces on defense

“Everybody expects us to run for 200 yards a game in only a short amount of time in the preseason with the amount of touches we get. It doesn’t work like that, it’s not that easy. I know if they look around the league, not many guys are running the ball really well, and the guy who is is usually the guy at the end because he’s getting the most touches more than anything. So I think that everybody needs just to relax and just be excited for when the season gets here because we’ll be where we need to be.” – Running back Jonathan Dwyer on concerns over the running game due to a lack of preseason production

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