Arizona Cardinals: Third-straight win shows offensive, cultural growth

The Arizona Cardinals are looking like the most fun ‘bad’ team in the NFL after their third-straight win and with an improving rookie quarterback and coach.

The Arizona Cardinals are on the scene, ladies and gentleman. Kyler Murray and the Cards have won three-straight games now and sit at 3-3-1 as they defeated the New York Giants on Sunday in Week 7, 27-21.

Not only are we seeing the development of Murray at quarterback, but we’re also seeing an improvement of the play calling and offensive schemes, which is a big credit to Kliff Kingsbury at the helm.

For the first few games of the season, this offense’s game plan wasn’t all that creative or innovative, especially down in the red zone. The gist of the offense was to put the ball in Murray’s hands and let him improvise on his own with four wide receivers split out wide for a large majority of the plays.

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What we’ve seen from Kingsbury and the offense in recent weeks, however, has been a focus on getting out to early leads and getting the jump on their opponents in the first half. The Cardinals got out to a 17-0 lead against the Giants, a 20-10 lead in Week 6 against the Atlanta Falcons, and a 13-6 lead the week before that against the Cincinnati Bengals.

Their offense has also seen a shift in the usage of the running back and the designed runs for Murray himself. David Johnson is a back that gets a ton of usage both in the run game and passing game. But what has been noticed these past few weeks is that whatever seems to be working for the offense is what goes, meaning the Cardinals are riding the hot hand on offense overall instead of forcing game plans.

Against the Giants, we saw Chase Edmonds get the brunt of the work with Johnson banged up. Edmonds carried the ball 27 times for a total of 126 yards and three touchdowns and was one of, if not the most productive running back in Week 7 altogether.

The previous outing against the Falcons was a passing clinic put on by Murray and the Air Raid offense. Murray finished with 340 yards through the air and three touchdowns in their 34-33 victory.

Two weeks ago against the Bengals, it was a mix of both the run game and pass game with Murray, Johnson and Edmonds all getting their fair share of carries on the ground and Murray throwing for a respectable 262 yards and two touchdowns.

The good teams in this league tend to be able to win in all different kinds of ways as opposed to sticking to just one formula. The Cardinals are now winning games with variation of game plans on offense. Yes, they beat three bad teams in Cincy, Atlanta and Big Blue, but this team is also slowly getting better and more adjusted to a winning culture.

This Cardinals teams has something special brewing on the offensive side of the ball, and we’re going to see them rack up some wins when this season is all said and done. It’s not crazy at this point to think these guys can get to at least seven wins before the end of the year. They have a tough test for Week 8 in New Orleans against the Saints, but don’t be surprised if they hang around in that game for a while. They’re finding themselves and the evidence is on the field.