Week Three saw talk of one Offence being on pace to break records as Tom Brady threw his 400th and 401st career touchdown passes, but there is another team in the league residing in the NFC West that is racking up the points this season and that is the Arizona Cardinals.
Having
racked up the points in their first two games against the New Orleans Saints
and Chicago Bears respectively the Cardinals showed no sign of slowing down in
their opening divisional game against the San Francisco 49ers. In fact you could argue the Cardinals were
given every encouragement by the Niners as Colin Kaepernick showed the sort of
form that has previously earned him the nickname of Colin Throw A Pick! The
Niners QB threw up 4 interceptions in this game including 2 pick 6’s in his
first few passes to throw San Francisco out of their game plan pretty much
straight away.
Arizona
then proceeded to capitalise on this start on the backs of two stars that have
returned to form that many thought had long passed them by. Chris Johnson (the former Titan & Jet) he
of CJ2K fame churned out 110 yards on the ground from 22 carries and 2
touchdowns, and with Andre Ellington likely to be out for at least one more
game, Johnson will be having another chance to pitch a starting claim going
forward. Meanwhile at receiver,
alongside youngster John Brown, veteran and future Hall of Fame first ballot
Larry Fitzgerald went over 100 yards for the second week in a row, this time
Fitzgerald hauled in 9 catches for 134 yards and 2 touchdowns.
There were
thoughts that going into this year the Arizona defence would be hampered by the
loss of Antonio Cromartie and Todd Bowles it the Jets, but Justin Bethel showed
he can replace Cromartie with the opening pick 6, and was quickly followed into
the end zone by Honey Badger Tyrann Mathieu, who added a second pick later in
the game. The Cardinals move on to a 3-0
start and have a second divisional game next weekend against the Rams, after
losing 2 starting QB’s last year against the Rams, Bruce Arians team will be looking
to get through this week unscathed and on what we have seen so far if Carson
Palmer does stay healthy he has shown he had mastered the offensive scheme and
this Cardinals team could well be in the playoff race come January.
The biggest
rivals to the Cardinals were always likely to be the Seattle Seahawks and they
had the good fortune to be an 0-2 team playing the Chicago Bears, a scenario
that is always likely to cure your team's problems especially when starting QB
Jay Cutler was missing for the Bears.
The Seahawks were also boosted by the return of Kam Chancellor who has
ended his contract holdout, and the Seahawks defence suddenly clicked into gear
and pitched a shutout protecting a 26-0 victory for the Seahawks.
Rookie
Tyler Lockett in just his third career start, recorded his second career kick
return touchdown, but the most talked about moment in this one was another kick
return, when Richard Sherman ended up returning a punt 64 yards following a
fake fielding of the catch by Lockett who was standing on the other side of the
field. The last team to fall for this
trick was the Seahawks when the Rams pulled this off for a touchdown last year,
and the Hawks showed they remember last year by replicating the play this time. From an outside looking in perspective it is
very difficult to know how teams fall for this move each season, you are the
team punting the ball, surely you know which direction the ball is going,
somebody waving their arms on the other side of the field, should not make the
entire coverage team rush to the wrong part of the field.
However,
future Seahawks opponents, might want to take notice, of the stats posted by
Jimmy Graham, who is starting to show signs
The St
Louis Rams were involved in a strange one at home to the Pittsburgh Steelers, it
was the first time I have heard of a game delay for pitch conditions inside a
dome stadium. When this one got going it
was a very heavy dose of defensive play as Pittsburgh Steelers outlasted St
Louis 12-6. The difference in the end
turned out to be the returning Le'veon Bell who recorded the only touchdown and
70 yards on the ground and a further 60 in the air.
The Rams D
can add another name to the list of QB’s they have knocked out, not that a
Gregg Williams coached team would be interested in stats like those obviously,
when Big Ben Rothlisberger went down with a feared ACL injury, which now seems
to be an MCL problem and is likely to keep Ben out for 4 to 6 weeks only and
not the year. Nick Foles showed he was
efficient going 19 of 28 for 197 Yards, just over 100 of those were to Kenny
Britt. One bright spot for the Rams was
this was the debut of rookie Todd Gurley who will benefit from having proper
game snaps under his belt going ahead to Arizona next week. So lets see which Rams team shows up when the
Cardinals host them this weekend
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