ESPN’s Barnwell: Cardinals have NFL’s fifth-best offensive triplets
Jun 15, 2016, 1:00 PM
Last season, the Arizona Cardinals led the league in yards and finished second in the NFL in points scored.
They accumulated the second-most passing yards, trailing only the New Orleans Saints, and notched the eighth-most rushing yards, too.
In summation, their offense was good. Very, very good.
Their offense was also incredibly diverse, with contributions coming from many different players. Nine different players caught at least one touchdown pass, while four different running backs reached the end zone. QB Carson Palmer threw 35 touchdown passes and also ran for a score.
So, when ESPN’s Bill Barnwell decided to produce a piece ranking the NFL’s offensive triplets, it’s understandable if you’d have a difficult time guessing who he chose for the Cardinals.
His parameters were that a QB had to be chosen for every team, while the other two spots were up for grabs between the other skill positions.
For the Cardinals, he chose Palmer along with receivers Larry Fitzgerald and John Brown, and then ranked that trio fifth in the entire NFL behind the Carolina Panthers, Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers.
You could swap out Brown for Michael Floyd or promising halfback David Johnson, but any grouping of Arizona’s triplets has to include Fitzgerald, who underwent a career renaissance after moving into the slot on a more regular basis. Fitz was up to 66 targets in the slot last year, with those targets producing 52 catches (for a ridiculous 78.8 percent catch rate) and three touchdowns. Fitzgerald averaged 75.9 receiving yards per game, topping 75 yards per game for just the second time since his career season in 2008. You might expect Palmer, 36, to decline after a standout 2015 campaign, but that seemed to be the case after 2014, when Palmer played well before tearing his ACL, and he only got better instead. Even if Palmer doesn’t lead the league in Total QBR, as he did with an 82.1 mark last year, the Cardinals should be a devastating downfield attack yet again under Bruce Arians.
One of the more exciting aspects of the Cardinals’ offense, at least in terms of how 2015 may impact 2016, is that the only changes to last year’s group are along the offensive line. Every player who threw a pass, caught a ball or ran for yards has returned, which lends credence to the idea that the Cardinals could reasonably take another step forward.
Of course, while head coach Bruce Arians is excited about having everyone back because everything runs smoother, he is also careful to make sure he does not try to change too much just because everyone returned.
“You have to watch from overloading that part and ask them to do too much; just refine what we do and do it a little bit better — a few tweaks here and there,” the coach said. “And they understand because they’re watching themselves from all of last year and what we did really, really well, and what we did not so well.
“So it’s more of a tweaking that part than adding more stuff. You can overload them and then I don’t want them re-learning, or learning new stuff. That’s why I thought we practiced so fast this spring.”
