Rapid reactions: Cardinals’ ugly loss to Commanders

The Arizona Cardinals fell to 1-3 after a blowout loss to the Washington Commanders 42-14 at State Farm Stadium on Sunday.

In his return to Arizona as Commanders offensive coordinator, Kliff Kingsbury and former Arizona State Sun Devil Jayden Daniels picked apart the Cardinals’ defense.

As a team, Washington amassed 449 yards of offense and scored on all but two of its drives throughout the afternoon.

Arizona Sports hosts and reporters gave their biggest takeaways from the Cardinals’ loss:

Our reactions to Cardinals’ loss to the Commanders in Week 4:

Vince Marotta, co-host of Bickley & Marotta Mornings: Going back to the 2022 season, I’ve been on record saying I would love to see what Kyler Murray looked like in a non-Kliff Kingsbury offense and what Kliff’s offense looked like with a different starting QB.

I got a real good look at both on Sunday, and I didn’t like what I saw when looking through the Cardinals lens. Kingsbury’s Washington Commanders offense dominated the day in a 42-14 win over the Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Once again, the Cardinals offense scored a touchdown on its first possession of the game — a smooth nine-play, 55-yard drive that ended in a Murray-to Marvin Harrison Jr. scoring strike. And that’s pretty much where the highlights ended for the guys in red.

Washington answered with a nine-play, 70-yard touchdown drive of its own, putting the Cardinals defense on its heels, and they never really found their balance after that. Back to Murray. The last two weeks have been enough to shake my confidence in him as the answer for this team at quarterback. Last week against Detroit, a resurgent defense gave Murray and the offense plenty of opportunities to make a play and win the game. He didn’t engineer those plays.

Sunday, while I don’t think Murray got any help from the sidelines in terms of play-calling or in pass-blocking by a porous offensive line, he did nothing to indicate he can be the difference. He was inaccurate, unsure in the pocket and ran the ball only once. This was Murray’s 12th start in the Drew Petzing offense, so forgive me if I’m running out of that “it’s gonna come in time” feeling. His counterpart, Jayden Daniels, was playing in his fourth NFL game under a brand-new head coach and a coordinator (Kingsbury) who was thought to be a fish out of water in the NFL. Yet, it was Daniels who was by far the best quarterback on the field.

We’re basically a quarter of the way through the season and Murray has had one special performance. Quarterbacks who are brilliant 25 percent of the time typically don’t win Super Bowls.

Back to the play-calling aspect — with Washington leading 14-7 and about nine minutes to go in the second quarter, the Cardinals faced a 3rd-and-1 at their own 37-yard line. The running game, powered by James Conner, was averaging 5.8 yards per carry at that point. Petzing drew up a pass play and Murray couldn’t connect with Michael Wilson. They’d punt the ball on fourth down. Washington didn’t score on the ensuing possession — Daniels’ one bad pass of the game was picked off by Garrett Williams on a first down at midfield — but the Cardinals’ offense looked out of sync the rest of the game. This was a highly discouraging performance in all phases by the Cardinals, who fell to 1-3, but mostly at the QB position.

Dave Burns, co-host of Burns & Gambo: What is Kyler Murray without Kliff Kingsbury? That was always one of the big explorations of the 2024 season. How good can Murray be? How explosive and elite will the offense be? Our expectations were high and leveled up even higher after his “perfect” game vs. the Rams. Sunday flipped the question on its head: What is Kliff without Kyler? And while one game proves nothing and doesn’t even come close to answering the question, that was the thought I couldn’t get out of my head.

Freed of the burden of being the leader of the entire operation and with a quarterback of a similar-but-different skill set, Kliff took out his new toy and let it eat. We’ll remember Sunday as the “Kliff” game for a long time. Jayden Daniels looked terrific, the offense obliterated the Cardinals and Kliff wore his vindication like an expensive Swiss watch for the whole world to see. The Cardinals were a more than willing accomplice.

The defense was the embodiment of our worst fears. Third downs conversions like clockwork. Marvin Harrison Jr went long, baffling, stretches without seeing the ball at all. Murray had very little time to throw and outside of the opening drive did very little that one would call memorable. This game produced a rarity; for one of the few times in the Jonathan Gannon era the Cardinals were embarrassed. Yes, there have been losses but not many of the it-wasn’t-supposed-to-happen-like-THAT variety. So now we find out what this coach/QB combo is made of and how they respond.

Tyler Drake, Cardinals reporter and co-host of the Cardinals Corner podcast: Yuck. That’s about the best way to sum up that horrendous Cardinals loss. Not only did they get run out of their own building, it came at the hands of Jayden Daniels and Kliff Kingsbury. Jonathan Gannon was spot on when talking about any sort of positives. There were too few and far between for them to ever have a chance in this one. This is a massive look-in-the-mirror type loss for Arizona. How the Cardinals respond will be very telling for how the rest of the season could shake out.

Kellan Olson, co-host of Arizona Sports at Night: Multiple fears inside the preseason outlook wanted to become realized in this football game.

The first and primary concern is the defense will be too bad for Arizona to have a competitive season. Jayden Daniels had all day to throw, and when his progressions weren’t open, he still had enough room to slide around the pocket and scamper for a few yards. The thing is, his progressions were open. A lot. Add in a bad performance by the run defense for good measure too. This was an excellent opportunity against a rookie quarterback and the defense let him feel cozy the whole afternoon. Please be back next week, Darius Robinson.

The second concern is this offense isn’t capable of being elite. While Sunday was another meh performance from Kyler Murray when we can all agree that meh is not good enough for him, his receivers were routinely failing to create space. On top of that, Arizona’s offensive line was outmatched in pass protection and the run game was inconsistent. Trey McBride’s absence obviously matters but surely not that much.

Yes, Weeks 1 and 3 included playing two really good teams down to the wire in promising fashion. But part of being a good team is finishing. Arizona is going to have do that in a close game against quality competition while avoiding another blowout result like this one in order to inspire any confidence soon that a win total above six is coming.

Kevin Zimmerman, lead editor of ArizonaSports.com: There were certainly play-calling questions created by Arizona’s Drew Petzing. Working across from former Cardinals play caller Kliff Kingsbury, the lens of viewing it was through the magnifying glass held by a third-grader who was purposely twisting the sun’s light into quite a dumpster fire of a result.

But guess what? The Cardinals had zero answers on either side of the ball, and at some point, it’s got to come down to wondering if this team is losing because it didn’t spend money and returned too much from the four-win squad of last season. That’s the big picture question here. Do the Cardinals have top-20 roster talent? Top-25?

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