At his press conference last Monday, coach Bruce Arians acknowledged how some fans might feel like the sky is falling after the Cardinals' loss in Seattle last week.
"It's easy to look at it that way sometimes," he said, laughing.
It's even easier after the Cardinals dropped their second straight game on Sunday in Atlanta. And Cardinals fans aren't laughing.
Atlanta's 29-18 win at the Georgia Dome was so stunning and so definitive that it was hard to recognize the team that had overachieved all season.
"We obviously did not come out with the emotion and intensity that I thought we would in this ball game," Arians said. "That was the big message now in the locker room: When you are looking for answers, look in the mirror, don't look anywhere else and don't lie to yourself."
Of the remaining games on the Cardinals' schedule, this was a game the Cards needed badly to hold off Seattle in the NFC West race and to stiff-arm Green Bay and Philadelphia for the NFC's top seeds. Of the five remaining games, this also was the most winnable. The Falcons were 4-7 and hadn't beaten a single team outside the pathetic NFC South ... until now.
On Sunday, they were in attack mode from the start. Running back Steven Jackson broke tackles on a 55-yard run to the 1-yard line to set up Atlanta's first TD off a fourth-down completion. Devin Hester had a big punt return to set up a field goal. Cardinals quarterback Drew Stanton threw his fourth interception (he threw another one later) in the last three games, and receiver Julio Jones beat cornerback Patrick Peterson -- something he did all day -- for a 32-yard touchdown catch to give the Falcons a 17-0 lead before the Cardinals knew what hit them.
"Defensively, we gave up those big plays and it kind of sucked the energy out of us," linebacker Larry Foote said. "We had some mental breakdowns, they got some big plays and we couldn't catch up to them."
Arizona's defense even allowed a 100-yard rusher for the first time in 25 games when Jackson hit 101, but the unit wasn't alone in its poor execution. Even the coaching staff was out of sorts.
Defensive coordinator Todd Bowles' supposed audition for a possible Falcons head coaching job was a disaster, the Cardinals staff missed an obvious no-catch by Jones (10 catches, 189 yards) along the sidelines that would have been reversed had they challenged it, and Arians oddly elected to throw a deep ball to fifth receiver Ted Ginn that fell incomplete on third-and-2 in the second half when the Cardinals desperately needed points.
Aggressiveness has defined Arians' approach and it has led to a lot of Arizona's success, but this call made little sense when Stanton was struggling so badly and the offense had a legitimate chance to cut into the lead.
"It's something that we looked at, and we weren't good enough on third downs," Stanton said. "When we're having successes in offense, we're sustaining drives. In the previous month before that we were reaching our goals and we haven't the past two weeks. That's something we need to get back to doing."
The Cardinals defense managed to stabilize the game a bit and hold Atlanta to four field goals the rest of the way, but 29 points is far too much for this team to allow, and that is doubly true now that Stanton is the quarterback for the remainder of the season.
In the three weeks since Stanton took over as the starter, he has completed 59 of 97 passes (60.8 percent) with three touchdowns and five interceptions. The offense has scored just one TD in its last 11 quarters, and Stanton's passer ratings the past three weeks are 91.4, 54.8 and 71.9.
"He has got to play better for us to win," Arians said.
It's reasonable to think that the Cardinals defense will get its house in order next week against Kansas City after a rare bad day at the office, but it is anything but reasonable to assume the offense will do the same.
Andre Ellington left the game with a hip pointer, right guard Paul Fanaika suffered a high-ankle sprain and Larry Fitzgerald is still out. But it is also clear now that there has been a significant drop-off at quarterback since Carson Palmer's season-ending ACL tear, and it is beginning to look like the only way this team is going to do damage in the playoffs is if it secures a home game.
Then again, the way things are going, the playoffs are in doubt. Green Bay and Philadelphia pulled into a virtual tie with the Cardinals stop the NFC (Arizona still owns the conference record tiebreaker over the Packers and head-to-head over the Eagles). Seattle is just one game back in the NFC West with a big game looming two weeks from now in Glendale, and a group of other teams is eyeing opportunity as the Cardinals' slide threatens to become a full-on collapse.
"Most likely, besides the '72 Dolphins, you are going to get some adversity," Foote said. "We are going to see now. We are going to get the cameras ready and we'll take the notebooks and see in the next couple of weeks how we respond."
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