The Arizona Cardinals wrapped up their final practice of
the week Wednesday, and there’s one central theme coming
from Tempe: accountability.

Players and coaches believe that when every player is
accountable — especially after a loss — winning becomes
easier.

“If everybody has accountability, if everyone does their
job, we win football games,” quarterback Kevin Kolb said.
“It’s hard to get that many guys to do it; everybody has
different personalities. It’s our job to step up and have
some self accountability.”

Kolb knows that “everybody” includes himself, noting that
he too needs to improve.

However, head coach Ken Whisenhunt doesn’t attribute the
team’s struggles to a lack of effort, instead saying the
level of focus must be raised.

“When you talk about 1-4 and how do we get out of that,
then you got to focus on things,” Whisenhunt said. “That’s
what we’re talking about, making sure we’re working on the
details, that we’re holding each guy accountable that
they’re doing it right in practice. If we can put greater
emphasis on that and that has success for us in the games
then we’ve accomplished what we set out to do.”

The lack of an offseason hurt the Cardinals from a
continuity standpoint, but linebacker Joey Porter knows
the players can no longer make excuses.

“This isn’t the first time a player has been put in a
sticky situation as a professional; you’re supposed to be
ready to handle all situations,” Porter said. “Nothing is
going to be out there perfect so when you face adversity
you just got to be ready to go do it and I think that’s
where we are now.”

To sum it all up, when players become more accountable the
mistakes start disappear and the finer details are ironed
out.

Good in theory and, according to Kolb, good in practice.
The signal caller believes the team got some good work in
during the bye week.

“It’s the most impressive two days of work I think we’ve
had so far,” Kolb said. “The urgency level is up and
everybody is just playing faster, so we got to make sure
after the break we continue and have that same
motivation.”

The team will find out if this accountability theme pays
off as they welcome the Pittsburgh Steelers to University
of Phoenix Stadium on October 23.

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