Arizona Cardinals hope to learn from latest loss

TEMPE, Ariz. — Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians compared his team’s loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, which came Sunday by a score of 25-13, to the one it suffered a couple weeks before.

“Same scenarios, and it was like déjà vu from St. Louis,” he said, referencing Arizona’s 24-22 Week 4 home defeat.

The gist, anyway, was that the Cardinals did plenty of good things — including moving the ball up and down the field with relative ease — but couldn’t come through in the red zone and made enough mistakes, be it penalties, turnovers, missed assignments or a combination of all three to cost them a chance at a win.

“It was us beating us,” the coach added.

That’s not to say Arians did not give the Steelers credit, because he did. But when you look at the box score, which shows the Cardinals out-gaining their opponent by a 469 yards to 310 yards margin, as well as watched the game — in which Arizona completely dominated the first 30 minutes — it’s easy to see where the coach is coming from.

However, the only number that matters is the final score, and that’s where the Cardinals fell short. Again.

“We’ll learn from it,” the coach concluded. “It’s not the end of the world, but you learn from it.

“We had the opportunity to do something special, win two on the road. We can still do that and we’ll move on and learn from it. I like the way our football team has been resilient and bounced back so far this year.”

Though the loss dropped the Cardinals’ record to 4-2, the team still holds a 1.5 game lead in the NFC West. Sure, a golden opportunity to extend their advantage to three games over the Seattle Seahawks was wasted, but as of now, disappointment seems to be about the worst thing to come from the afternoon.

“It was pretty tough, knowing that was a team we we were supposed to go out there and win (against),” running back Chris Johnson said. “We feel like we kind of lost it ourselves, we gave them the game. We had a lot of mental mistakes that we’ve got to get corrected or whatever.

“But that’s another one of those games we were supposed to win.”

Perhaps, as was the talk Monday at the Cardinals’ training facility, they may gain some knowledge from this defeat. As Arians said, his team will learn from what transpired in Pittsburgh and apply the lessons toward the rest of their season.

Of course there are only so many learning experiences a team can afford to go through in a season and still reach the postseason, so in that regard the Cardinals must be a little careful.

But if there is any panic inside the team’s locker room, the players are doing a good job of hiding it. There is a strong belief, and it’s not necessarily unwarranted, that what has ailed the Cardinals in their two losses is easily curable.

“No,” receiver Larry Fitzgerald said after the game when asked if he’s worried. “Our issues on offense are pretty simple to me. We just have to be more effective in the red zone. We are getting down there, we have a ton of offensive red zone snaps. We just have to execute them better. Point blank, that is where it stops. If we are scoring touchdowns and we put 30 points on the board we walk out of here with a win. In both games we lost we did not execute in the red zone. So it is not a lot of problems we have to fix it is just one glaring one.”

Quarterback Carson Palmer agreed that there are easy fixes, saying he thought the team moved the ball well for the most part but cannot afford to be settling for field goals rather than punching the ball into the end zone.

“We’ll continue to work,” he said. “If there’s one thing this team does is work. We’ll continue to work and continue to get better.”

In a way, while fans have reason to be frustrated and the Cardinals have reason to be disappointed, the fact that the team has had some success even in the losses could be seen as reason for optimism. Sure, it’s never enjoyable when a team costs itself a chance at wins, but at the same time, it’s better than losing because you were clearly an inferior team.

The Cardinals have proven they are far from perfect, but is it difficult to see them improving where they need to?

“As a group there’s a lot we can improve on, we’ve just got to continue to get better especially for 60 minutes,” defensive lineman Calais Campbell said. “We do so well the majority of the game and then it’s one bad play here, one bad play there, mess around and cost yourself the game.”

In a way it is that simple. As long as the Cardinals do not commit killer penalties — they had nine for 111 yards Sunday — and don’t turn the ball over, which they did three times, chances are they will be talented enough to beat their opponent.

Does a team really need to learn that penalties and turnovers are bad things? Probably not, but if there are going to be issues of any kind, now is not the worst time to have them.

“For something like this to happen, it’s good that it happens in October and September, not November, December,” veteran linebacker Dwight Freeney said. “It’s a learning process. You have to learn, and I think this is what we’re going to do.

“We’re going to take our bumps; no one said we’re going to win every single game, I don’t think any team — yeah, you want to — and sometimes you lose however you lose, but the big thing is making sure that we have the steam and the confidence in December and in January that those problems are corrected by then.”

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