TEMPE, Ariz. -- Bruce Arians and his staff deserve credit for leading the Cardinals to wins in all the games they were supposed to win this season.
The management staff deserves credit for bringing in some key pieces such as John Abraham, Karlos Dansby, Tyrann Mathieu and Andre Ellington that helped ease the loss of starters to injury, defection or release, and provide various elements the team needed.
The defense deserves credit for making this 6-4 record possible when the offense was struggling through the season's first seven games. And the offense deserves credit for sticking with it through some trying times.
Now comes the hard part.
A three-game winning streak has put the Cardinals in position for a playoff push. The next two weeks and four of the final six feature games that are either toss-ups or matchups in which the Cards will be underdogs. First up are the Colts (7-3) on Sunday at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale.
“It’s a really, really good football team. It’s a team that’s going to be in the playoffs," receiver Larry Fitzgerald said of the Colts. "(If) we’re really contenders and we feel as though we can be a playoff team, these are the kinds of games we have to win. We’re at home. There are no excuses.”
That's it in a nutshell. The Colts are 4-1 on the road this season, including a win at San Francisco. They feature perhaps the game's best young quarterback in Andrew Luck and the NFL's sacks leader in Robert Mathis (13.5).
But Arizona is 4-1 at home, including wins over Detroit (6-4) and Carolina (7-3). It's time to find out what this team is really made of. Is it a middling club that will be able to hang its hat on progress but not the postseason? Is it a team that just scrapes its way into the playoffs? Or is it a club that is capable of doing damage with that defense, assuming the offense can ever develop consistency in the running and passing games?
"Over the last two weeks, in practice especially, things have really started to click," said quarterback Carson Palmer, who threw for 419 yards with no interceptions last week in Jacksonville and has posted his best three passer ratings since the season opener over the past three weeks. "I don’t know if you'd say the light bulb has turned on, but guys are getting more and more comfortable in their roles and in the system and in the schemes we're running.
"The rhythm and timing of the passing game is not something you just get from looking at a piece of paper or watching it on film. It takes repetition after repetition, and sometimes it takes longer than you would like."
That time has likely run out. It's Week 12, and the next two games will provide some perspective on that wondrous season in Indianapolis that earned Arians his first head coaching gig at age 60.
Was it the mark of a man long overdue for his first big break? Or did he just catch luck in a bottle?
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