Arizona Cardinals look to maintain focus despite success
Sep 24, 2012, 7:27 PM | Updated: 8:58 pm
The Arizona Cardinals are not allowing their surprising 3-0 start to get to their heads.
Head coach Ken Whisenhunt said that he doesn’t sense his team buying into the hype quite yet and feels the locker room is at a good place right now.
“I don’t think that by any stretch of the imagination do we think we have arrived,” Whisenhunt said. “There are a lot of things that we have got to work on where we sit as a team right now.”
Whisenhunt said that his team talked about opening the season 3-0 at the beginning of the year, and he feels the team needs to keep the same focus they have had since the start.
Defensive end Calais Campbell said “3-0 doesn’t mean anything” and feels that the end goal is all that matters.
“We are just playing good ball right now. The only record we really care about is the end of the year, so right now it doesn’t even matter,” Campbell said. “It is just three games.”
The whole team seems to be buying into the mentality of taking the season one game at a time.
Linebacker Paris Lenon said his team needs to focus on every team they play and not get ahead of themselves.
“I came into this league hungry and I have stayed that way,” Lenon said. “I think we will do a good job of keeping focus.”
Campbell knows if the Cardinals lose that hunger, their record can easily go south.
“As quick as you can win them, you can lose them. We don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves,” Campbell said. “Take it one day at a time and try to continue what we have been doing.”
The Cardinals learned last year just how quickly they can lose games.
After winning their season opener against Carolina, the Cardinals lost six straight games and found themselves with a disappointing 1-6 record.
Whisenhunt described it as a “painful process” and said that he never wanted a learning experience like that again.
Since that time, the Cardinals have won 10 of 12 regular season games, more than any other team in the NFL.
“The one thing I have said about this team consistently from this year to last year is that they have been willing to work and they have been willing to do what we have asked them to do,” Whisenhunt said.
The Cardinals will look to improve to 4-0 on Sunday when they take on the 1-2 Miami Dolphins.
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