4. Arizona Cardinals
Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar had a great piece that broke down the subtle rise of Arizona’s offense, with both Pete Carroll and Bobby Wagner expressing their belief in the Kingsbury-Murray project. But, man! I didn’t think any of it meant we’re taking a giant swig of the Upset Juice before the Week 16 kickoff in Seattle. This week’s absolutely deserving winner of the Oliver Stone Award, the Cardinals’ 27-13 takedown of their division foe was tops for Week 16 insanity. Labeling the upset as such isn’t a knock against the Cardinals, mind you, but more of understood respect for what it means to win in Seattle, against a top-level team and all the 12th men and women.
But the Cardinals did it, behind a giant day on the ground and a decent showing through the air. Injuries didn’t help the Seahawks, of course, but let’s not act like they were only playing eight players at a time or anything crazy. It was 11 on 11, and the Cardinals’ 11 were better—including on the offensive line, where they even excelled at the “little things” like sticking to their assignments during some trickery:
Yeah… @K1 can catch too. pic.twitter.com/Rbuj5KV4uF
— Arizona Cardinals ⋈ (@AZCardinals) December 22, 2019
Justin Pugh, Justin Murray, JR Sweezy, DJ Humphries, and AQ Shipley: You were like a 13th man!