Despite tough season, Cardinals stay positive

Nov 21, 2011, 9:25 PM | Updated: 11:47 pm

Every loss is a tough pill to swallow.

The Arizona Cardinals dropped their seventh game of the
season Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers, losing 23-
7.

What makes it worse is the Cardinals, after rolling off
two straight wins, finally looked like a team that was
ready to turn the corner.

Then came Sunday, as the 49ers forced five Cardinals
turnovers and only allowed 229 yards of offense.

Even though the loss has potential to hurt the team’s
mentality, head coach Ken Whisenhunt says his team doesn’t
have a negative state of mind.

“I think that they believe that we are making progress as
a team,” Whisenhunt said. “Even though things weren’t
going well those guys were still very positive very
upbeat.”

The Cardinals have been competitive in four of the seven
losses, losing by a combined 11 points. So even though the
Cardinals haven’t been good, there is something to build
on.

“We’re not where we want to be record wise, but we’ve won
two of the last three games so our guys are seeing
improvement,” Whisenhunt said. “I see positive signs all
the time in the practice field from the effort, we’ve got
enough good leaders that work hard all the time like Larry
[Fitzgerald], like Darnell [Dockett] that set the tempo.”

Whisenhunt believes his players will not become
discouraged at any point this season.

“Our guys have worked hard,” Whisenhunt said. “We got
enough young guys that want to play and that want to do it
the right way that it hasn’t been an issue.”

The Cardinals must now move on and prepare for the Rams on
Sunday. Whisenhunt says this week will be about fine
tuning the scheme since the two teams have already met
once this season.

“You don’t have to spend a lot of time studying the
players or how they play certain techniques or how they
play the schemes of their offense or defense,” Whisenhunt
said. “You can have a greater anticipation of how their
going to play you, so it gives you a chance to really fine
tune and really prepare with your gameplan.”

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