NFL Schedule Preview: Arizona Cardinals
By Chris Smith
It’s 32 days until the new NFL season begins but for a football mad guy like me that’s just too long so I’ve taken it upon myself to go over each NFL schedule and try and predict for all of you what may happen once the season rolls around.
The NFC West finishes it’s run in our scheduling analysis with the Arizona Cardinals who went 8-8 in 2011. Here’s how I think their season will go:
- Week 1 vs Seattle Seahawks – Win
- Week 2 at New England Patriots – Loss
- Week 3 vs Philadelphia Eagles – Loss
- Week 4 vs Miami Dolphins – Win
- Week 5 at St Louis Rams – Loss
- Week 6 vs Buffalo Bills – Loss
- Week 7 at Minnesota Vikings – Loss
- Week 8 vs San Francisco 49ers – Loss
- Week 9 at Green Bay Packers – Loss
- Week 10 BYE
- Week 11 at Atlanta Falcons – Loss
- Week 12 vs St Louis Rams – Win
- Week 13 at New York Jets – Loss
- Week 14 at Seattle Seahawks – Loss
- Week 15 vs Detroit Lions – Loss
- Week 16 vs Chicago Bears – Loss
- Week 17 at San Francisco 49ers – Loss
Overall Record for the Arizona Cardinals in 2012: 3-13
For a season that starts so positively, there’s not much in this schedule for Cardinals fans to be cheerful about. For a start, it ranks in the top 5 toughest schedules according to the results of our previous previews. Arizona has the advantage of getting a couple of nice soft matchups early but this team is so full of holes on both offense and defense that it’s tough to see them taking advantage of a majority of those easier weeks.
Getting the Patriots and the Eagles on back to back weeks early might sound rough but with the softer match-ups around those games better prepared teams could reasonably deal with that and move on. The inability of this squad to do so is going to cost them as after week 7 their schedule turns putrid with the 49ers and Packers before the bye and then the Jets, Falcons, Lions, Bears, Seahawks and finishing with the 49ers once again. As second half football goes, that’s a tough road and this team will be one of those discussed in the running for the #1 overall draft pick as the season draws to a close.
With the NFC West now completed that leaves just one more division in our schedule previews – next week we travel to the always interesting NFC East to conclude our two month odyssey.