Fair to blame Bruce Arians for Cardinals' late loss to shorthanded Patriots
When asked about losing to a New England Patriots team that was without its star quarterback and tight end, Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians lamented the fact that they had an opportunity to win but missed it on a failed field-goal attempt in the final seconds.
“We should have won the game,” Arians said. “As poorly as we played, we still should have won.”
That’s true. But Arians seemed more hung up on the kick and not the execution and clock management of his team up until that point. The coach hurt his team before the missed try ever happened in the surprising 23-21 loss to the Patriots. What he pointed out was correct — but Arians failed to mention his own mistake in the formula for the loss.
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“Obviously a very disappointing loss,” Arians said. “We didn’t really play well enough in any phase, special teams, offense or defense, to win this game, although we still had chance and didn’t execute our snap, hold and kick.”
They also didn’t execute quality coaching. For the moment, let’s not even consider the Cardinals’ pregame preparation or the first 58 minutes of the contest; there were shortcomings there in the coaching department there, too, but none as egregious as what happened down the stretch. Later Arians said, “It starts at the top, we [were] obviously not ready to play, they outplayed us.” But he didn’t specify which mistake cost them late, which we are willing to do.
Here was the scene: After the two-minute warning, the Cardinals handed the ball to David Johnson, who rushed for 1 yard to the New England 33-yard line. The Patriots used their first timeout. It was 2nd and 9, and the Cardinals came out in “11” personnel, but with Larry Fitzgerald going in motion into a tight end position to the strong side.
This is a common run formation for most NFL teams, as the Patriots — albeit with eight in the box — had to stay in nickel to respect the pass. But the Cardinals did them a whopper of a favor: They threw the ball. And not the smartest throw, to boot.
This is where Arians outdid himself with cuteness, in my opinion. Running the ball on second down with Johnson, who had averaged 5.6 yards on the ground for the game and had rushed four times for 55 yards in the fourth quarter, makes the most sense here. The Patriots were playing with six defenders who had played 55 or more snaps at that point and were starting to lose their edge. Johnson had proved to be a tough tackle down the stretch.
Instead, the Cardinals opted to throw a fade to the sideline — to Jaron Brown of all people, and not Fitzgerald, who had caught fire in the game — in order to catch the Patriots off guard. It did not work (the pass was high and incomplete), and even if it did there was a 10-yard holding penalty that would have wiped out the play. The chances of that holding call happening on a power run to Johnson are far less, and the chances for gaining a few yards is much higher. The risk was unnecessary and, frankly, a bit foolish.
The Cardinals gained back a few of those yards later on a pass to Brown, and actually advanced the ball 4 yards from their second-down spot, but that was on 3rd and 22. The risk was extremely great at that point. They never should have been in that position. The Cardinals’ win probability, per Pro Football Reference, was 66 percent before that 2nd-and-9 play. On 3rd and 23, following the holding penalty and a pass for a loss of 4 yards on the replayed second down, it had dropped all the way to just over 40 percent. (And even though kickers routinely make 47-yard kicks, the Cardinals chances’ of winning did not improve much — by the statistics — on their final play.)
Arians is a fantastic coach who is not scared to go against the grain, and his players love him for it. That gambling style many times gives the Cardinals chances to win the game. But on Sunday night in a game the Cardinals could have stolen at the end, Arians’ error in judgment cost them.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at edholm@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
