Cardinals’ Dennis Gardeck, Zaven Collins step up for pass-rushing attack

Arizona Cardinals linebackers Dennis Gardeck and Zaven Collins made it a point to get to Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford on Sunday after their pass rushing struggles in Week 1’s loss to the Buffalo Bills.

Gardeck and Collins made their presence felt with four of the Cardinals’ five sacks on Stafford in the team’s 41-10 win on Sunday, with the former registering three sacks.

Gardeck told Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo on Monday that the defense wanted to get off to a good start and they set the tone for what they wanted to do on their first drive of the game, in which they got a turnover on downs.

“I think just the sense of urgency of let’s go win this from the time they set the ball down, which has kind of been felt since all of last week,” Gardeck said.

Collins told Arizona Sports’ Wolf & Luke on Monday they were confident of what they could accomplish on Sunday and that they had the right mindset headed into the game.

“We had a game plan and we just had that mentality of we want to hit these keys in our game plan as a defense and we did from the first drive,” Collins said.

“We kind of started in a bad area but we really don’t care whether it’s minus, plus, wherever we are at, ball in the middle of the field, we really don’t care it’s just the same mindset to just go out there and play defense and get them to a fourth down stop. They go for it on the fourth down, they turned the ball over to us and (they) didn’t get it. So that’s the mentality we had out the gate and it worked out for us.”

Collins said that the team’s pass rushing struggles against the Bills helped them learn against the Rams and what they could do moving forward.

“The first week we had good and bad traits and then we kind of just focused on eliminating those bad traits out of the game and just applying it to weeks moving forward and that’s what we did this week and I think it worked,” Collins said.

The Cardinals pass-rushing attack has been looking for players to step up due to the loss of B.J. Ojulari to a season-ending knee injury and defensive lineman Darius Robinson for the start of the season with a calf injury. Despite the injuries, Gardeck said he did not feel pressure to be more of a presence in the team’s pass-rushing attack and stuck to his game plan.

“I knew I was going to go out and play my football game,” Gardeck said. “I’m just going to go out there and execute what my coaches ask me to do. I know that I have the capability and when they decide that what’s they need, I’m going to go out there and do it.”