The Cardinals of Arizona are driven into oblivion

After seven games in the 2018 season, the Arizona Cardinals' offensive has still not had a good one match.

The only time the Cardinals scored more than 17 points on the scoreboard was a 28-18 win against the 49ers that saw San Francisco turn the ball five times – including a fumble returned for a touchdown. Apparently, this is the level of self-destruction that Arizona needs from an opponent to have a chance to score even an average number of points for an NFL offense.

With 223 total offensive yards in a 45-10 loss to the Denver Broncos on Thursday Football, the Cardinals became the first team in 13 years to score seven games in a season without exceeding 270 yards. The last was the Houston Texans in 2005, a team that finished 2-14 and allowed David Carr to be fired 68 times during the year. This is the level of incompetence with which cardinals are equal.

Even more surprising is that the cardinals are doing so in 2018 – a year in which NFL defenses can no longer keep pace with crime. The average team accumulates 366 yards per game – well above the 334.1-yard average in 2017 – while the Cardinals have barely 200.

If the Chiefs and Rams offenses play chess, the rest of the NFL plays the ladies and the Cardinals are in the corner chewing the pawns.

We can say that the Cardinals are the worst NFL garbage truck fire in 2018, but it all starts with a coaching staff, led by Steve Wilks, who does not do anything good.

David Johnson was relegated to a useless mess

Two years ago Johnson had racked up 1,239 rushing yards, 879 receiving yards and a total of 20 touchdowns in a season that earned him all-pro honors. To put this in perspective, Rams midfielder Todd Gurley won the NFL Offensive Player of the Year award last year with 19 touchdowns and 2,093 yards in the league, a number that led the league. away from last year in 2016.

In one way or another, the Cardinals offensive coordinator, Mike McCoy, managed to take a leading talent and get absolutely nothing from him. Johnson has gone from one of the NFL's most dangerous offensive weapons to a halfback who bangs his head against a wall 15 to 20 times per game, which gives little convincing results.

Johnson averages 3.17 yards per race and that's because the only way for cardinals to think about involving him is to run all the time at the center over and over again.

It's a crime against football and probably a death sentence for many fantastic teams.

Johnson started his career in the NFL with offensive strikes due to his size, speed and explosive nature, making it a nightmare. The Cardinals have managed to make sure that he never sees the space.

When it's time for Johnson to run, everyone in the stadium knows it's going to happen:

The lack of creative creativity means that Johnson never queues at the catcher position because, again, the Cardinals coaches seem determined not to leave their playmaker the workspace.

Against the Broncos, Johnson had 14 runs for 39 yards and three receptions for 31 yards. Unfortunately, it is now a normal game for a player who averages 132.4 yards per game.

Defense is also a disaster for coaches

Earlier this year, our own Alex Rubenstein pointed out that the Cardinals never depart from nickel defense. Never again.

In a 34-0 loss to the Rams in the second week, the Cardinals had five defensive backs – Patrick Peterson, Jamar Taylor, Budda Baker, Antoine Bethea and Tre Boston – on the field for the 72 defensive shots . The Cardinals had not even thought of "Hmm … an extra defensive lineman instead of another 200-pound base would probably be a good idea here."

Although there have not been five defensive defensemen who have played 100% of the shots in every game since the eruption of the second week, the problem has not disappeared. The Cardinals still refuse to have more than six line players and defensive linebackers on the court.

The only solution is to consider Budda Baker – a security man who spends most of his time near the line of scrimmage – more of a linebacker than security. The Cardinals believe in the position of "fundraiser", but a linebacker has the obvious disadvantage of having a linebacker of 5'115 pounds.

It should not be surprising that no team left more rushing yards or touchdowns than the Cardinals. While no other NFL team has dropped 10 touchdowns, Arizona now has 12, after Philip Lindsay and Royce Freeman of the Broncos registered in the end zone Thursday.

Nickel defense is the new standard in the NFL, but the Cardinals continue to stubbornly show every week why it can not be the team's only defense.

Are the cardinals trying to ruin Josh Rosen?

Rosen's career in the NFL began with less than five minutes to go in a game against the Bears with the 16-14 Cardinals lagging behind. Although Rosen followed the first 55 minutes of the game from the sideline, Steve Wilks decided it was up to the rookie to save the day.

Of the eight Rosen releases that night, he completed four passes for 37 yards, was intercepted to kill a player and was sacked to end the game. With Khalil Mack defending the defense, Wilks thought this was the perfect time to give his rookie his first action.

Rosen's final match in the NFL ended with the end of the race after being sacked for the sixth time by the Broncos. That happened when the Cardinals pushed the rookie back to the fourth and sixteenth game with less than two minutes to play in a 45-10 game. WHY?!

Behind an offensive line that has struggled all night, the Cardinals have seen fit to have Rosen struck again for no good reason before calling it night.

Looking back, when we sit down and look back, should he have been outside? Probably, but you say that now, when a situation occurs, "Wilks said after the match.

No, coach, that's the problem. The possibility that the situation is happening is why he should have gone out. Punt the ball. Throw the ball. Send Mike Glennon. Do something other than pushing Rosen again in the pressure.

Fortunately for the cardinals, Rosen said it was only a minor problem with the toes.

But after a few games in his NFL career, Rosen plays behind an offensive line that does not serve him and offers passes to receivers that do not help much. It was a bad night for Rosen, who too often put the ball in the hands of the defense, but the main problem of the Cardinals is a coaching staff that gives no chance to the team to win.