The Arizona Cardinals were without their top three safeties on Sunday in their 31-21 loss to the Carolina Panthers. Budda Baker had thumb surgery. Jalen Thompson is on injured reserve with an ankle injury and Chris Banjo injured his hamstring in Week 3.
It was a major reason why the defense struggled on Sunday. The Cardinals are hopeful they could get more than one of these players back this week to play against the New York Jets.
“I’m hopeful we’ll at least have a couple of them back.” head coach Kliff Kingsbury said on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Monday afternoon. “I’m not sure how that’s going to play out. We’re going to get them out there tomorrow and start working with them and seeing how they feel and where that goes. Hopefully, all three are sooner rather than later. All three, when they are out there, have done a nice job for us.”
Baker’s return would be huge.
“Without Budda, a top-three safety, we are a different defense,” he said. “We didn’t play like we wanted to (Sunday) but Budda is one of the best players in the league and is a real eraser for us back there and can fix a lot of things. Your could tell yesterday we missed him.”
Deionte Thompson, who played in Baker’s position, wasn’t bad. If at least Jalen Thompson or Banjo can come back, that will help a lot.
Getting Baker back will solve a lot of problems they had.
The first injury report of the week won’t come out until Wednesday afternoon.
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