The Arizona Cardinals enter the 2021 season with high expectations. There is a feeling in the building that this team needs to make the playoffs.
Based on Touchdown Wire’s pre-training camp power rankings, that was a reasonable expectation, as they ranked 13th.
It is uncertain what happened in the last few weeks but Touchdown Wire’s new power rankings by Doug Farrar paint a completely different picture.
Instead of a team primed for a playoff berth, they rank in the bottom 10 at No. 24 overall.
In 2019, Kliff Kingsbury’s first season as the Cardinals’ head coach, Kingsbury started off as you’d expect from someone who ran the passing game at Texas Tech — air-raid all the way, limited personnel packages, and strained production at the NFL level. Then, halfway through the season, Kingsbury expanded his personnel packages and helped rookie first overall pick Kyler Murray look like a future MVP candidate.
For whatever reason, this diversity did not transfer to the 2020 season. The Cardinals led the NFL in the use of 20 (four receivers and no running back) personnel with 20% of their overall snaps — only the Bills came close to that mark at 15%. Kingsbury used DeAndre Hopkins as the backside iso receiver without movement to a distressing degree, and the whole thing regressed — the Cardinals dropped from 13th to 19th in Offensive DVOA, the route combinations were limited (to put it kindly), and they don’t have the kind of defense that will make up for that. Either Kingsbury moves back to an NFL-sized passing game, or the league will continue to inform him that it has very much figured him out.
It is possible that things were simplified with a new receiver in Hopkins and a pandemic season that had virtually no offseason work, but their late-season struggles offensively raised questions.
They rank behind the Philadelphia Eagles and Las Vegas Raiders.
This is oddly low. They just missed the playoffs last season despite a number injuries on the defensive front. Almost every position was improved in the offseason.
They play in a very competitive division, but they should be considered a better team than one in the bottom 10.
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