At times in the first half of the Arizona Cardinals’ 29-9 win over the Chicago Bears Sunday, it felt like we had to scratch our eyes to see if what we were witnessing was real.
It didn’t matter that the Bears had 166 yards at halftime and had run 38 plays to the Cardinals 30. Or that the Bears held the ball for 16:01 to Arizona’s 13:59.
What mattered was the Cardinals led 21-9 thanks to the defense stopping the Bears on 5-of-7 third downs and limiting them to three field goals, one on a red-zone trip.
The flip side was a Cardinals offense that blitzed the Bears for 220 yards (7.3 per play), of which 148 were on the ground in a mere 16 carries (9.3 per run).
Of course, a large part of that was the improbable 53-yard touchdown dash by Emari Demercado with four seconds remaining in the half and a 70-yard touchdown drive that featured running back James Conner touching the ball on six consecutive plays.
Running back Trey Benson began that possession with a 17-yard run, Conner had one of 16 and Benson finished it with a one-yard touchdown after Conner was shaken up on a barreling six-yard run to the one-yard line after a leverage penalty on a field-goal attempt prompted head coach Jonathan Gannon to take the points off the board and go for the touchdown.
The first touchdown came on a two-yard run by tight end Trey McBride one play after a 15-yard pass play on third-and-1 moved the ball to the two-yard line. McBride joked that he never thought his first score of the season would be on a run instead of a pass.
Conner had 73 yards at halftime and finished the day with 107, Demercado had 59, Benson 37, Murray 6 and even DeeJay Dallas got two yards late in the game on his first run of the season as the ground game totaled 213 yards.
McBride said of the Demercado score on third-and-5, “Kyler comes in the huddle, he calls a run and we’re like ‘OK.’ He said, ‘Let’s go. Let’s have this one hit and block your butt off.’ They actually played a coverage — we were expecting them to all drop — they played two-high and I was able to get a good block on the MIKE linebacker to spring Emari for that run. That was a huge play for us going into half to get that touchdown.”
Said Gannon, “Huge faith in all those guys, and sometimes the carries shake out a little bit different. This game I loved the distribution of it. I thought Trey Benson got going tonight, thought he was running in there hard. I’m standing at field level, and when I see him finishing forward with his pads down he’s confident. He’s playing faster, he’s playing more violent and hitting holes. Obviously, James is the workhorse.
“Emari, I’ve been busting his balls like, ‘When are you going to house one? Come on man, let’s go.’ He did it today, so he’ll probably bust my balls. Then DeeJay. DeeJay is such an unsung hero for us from an energy standpoint through the week. What he does on fourth down; he is ready to go in on first, second, third down with the offense. This guy’s a warrior man. He is an alpha dog and I’m so glad we have him. This guy is lights out all the time, every day.”
Despite adversity on the right side of the line this season, Gannon hailed all the coaches involved and said, “Everybody involved put together a good scheme. That’s a hard front. That’s a hard team to run it on. They do a good job in the run game and I liked some of those different concepts that we had. They executed it in practice, so they felt good about going to the game and we’ve got good backs, man.”
Gannon also revealed that defensive coordinator Nick Rallis and special-teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers received game balls.
Rallis became a father for the second time about four and a half hours before kickoff and was there to run the defense.
Said Gannon, “Tuesday we had a little bit of back and forth on what to do versus this guy (Bears quarterback Caleb Williams) because he is a hard player to defend. They’ve got good skill, and I love the plan by him and the defense of how we attacked those guys. Attacked protection, cut some guys loose and credit to the players man. Coaches, that’s cool. The players made plays. They rushed well, they stayed connected. (We had) second-effort rushes to get them on the ground, kept the cup and kept them contained a lot. I thought they were good.
“Then as good as they rushed, the back end was covering well. I’m looking back there, there’s not a lot of air in certain calls and when you put color on color and make them operate under duress, it’s hard. Kudos to the back end too. They played well.”
As for Rodgers, Gannon said “he couldn’t even talk” and added, “Special teams was lights out. Just all kinds of different plays by a lot of different guys. We talked about it last night to ‘star your role.’ Whatever your role is, everyone’s the same. Everyone is the exact same no matter your role. Everyone has the same importance to the team. I thought guys starred their role.
“(Punter) Blake (Gillikin), (I) thought was really good. (Greg) Dortch had the return off the top of my head. ‘JB’ (Joey Blount) downs it. That was an unbelievable play. Chad Ryland’s kicking it through. I thought that was excellent.”
Just as so much was on a rare Sunday afternoon where the roof had to be closed after the game started because of rain and hail and the Cardinals won their third home game of the season in front of thousands of Bears fans after winning a total of three the previous two seasons.
Maybe, just maybe, something special is starting to happen for a franchise where consistent winning hasn’t been a part of its DNA and where perhaps many of the fans will find it worthwhile to be a part of it.
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