Coaches at all levels of football often say that for the most part, things are never as good as they seem to be or as bad they appear to be.
After a big victory, fan bases of teams that haven’t experienced consistent success react as if their team is heading to the Super Bowl and can beat anybody.
Conversely, an ugly loss will send that same fan base spiraling close to the abyss while wondering if their team can beat anybody ahead on the schedule.
That surely has been the case over the last two weeks for Arizona Cardinals fans and, for that matter, some in the media after an improbable come-from-behind win over the San Francisco 49ers was followed by a 21-point loss to the Green Bay Packers.
The reality, of course, is somewhere in between for a team still only 23 games into a massive roster rebuild that began when general manager Monti Ossenfort was hired after the 4-13 season in 2022. Does anyone know that what he is trying to do will work? Absolutely not.
But just as surely, no one also knows that it won’t, although a significant part of that latter belief is obviously rooted in the long history of losing that has resulted in having only one head coach of 11 with an overall winning record since the team moved to the desert in 1988. From 1960-1987 in St. Louis, there were three of eight.
That’s four head coaches of 19 with winning records in the last 64 seasons.
Still, it’s also important to note the collective amnesia that often envelops most everyone in this have-a-take world where opinions change on a weekly, if not daily, basis.
When the 2023 schedule was announced in May, it didn’t take long for everyone to realize it wasn’t very kind to the Cardinals in the first eight weeks of the season.
Five of the first six games and six of the first eight were against teams that were in the playoffs last season. Those teams had a combined record of 58-44 (56.7 percent). On the flip side, there are only three 2023 playoff teams to be played in the final 11 games. They had an 83-104 record (44.4 percent) last season.
The current record of the first six teams is 20-14 and the losses have come against teams that are 16-7. The current record of the final 11 teams (counting Seattle twice) is 28-34.
I dare say there weren’t too many people who thought the team’s record would be better than 2-4 at this point with the feeling that 1-5 would not be a surprise.
“We’ll see if they can rebound from a poor start” was a consistent part of the narrative from May through August.
Now, there are those that believe the sky is falling and that another rebuild with new leaders is what should happen.
When it’s noted that very few thought the Cardinals would be better than 2-4, the rejoinder is that it’s not that they lost to the Commanders and Packers but “how” they lost.
It’s an understandable reaction, but one that ignores the reality that games like that happen in the NFL. In fact, the Cardinals had a positive one, defeating the Rams by 31 points.
While the league often touts how many close games there are, it’s important to also note that in the first six weeks of the season, there have been 17 of 92 games (18.5 percent) where the margin of victory was at least 20 points and four with 30 or more.
In a week-to-week league where what happens one week often has no bearing on the next, it sometimes doesn’t mean much when a blowout occurs. As Margaret Mitchell wrote in the last line of the classic book “Gone with the Wind:” “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
We’ll find out soon enough what “tomorrow” will look like for the Cardinals.
20-point wins in the NFL
38: Week 6, Detroit 47, Dallas 9
37: Week 3, Buffalo 47, Jacksonville 10; Week 5: New Orleans 47, Carolina 10
31: Week 2, Arizona 41, L.A. Rams 10
28: Week 4: Washington 42, Arizona 14
27: Week 3, Minnesota 34, Houston 7
26: Week 4, Baltimore 35, Buffalo 10; Week 5, Chicago 36, Carolina 10
25: Week 2: New Orleans 44, Dallas 19
24: Week 6: Tampa Bay 51, New Orleans 27
23: Week 2: L.A. Chargers 26, Carolina 3
21: Week 2, Buffalo 31, Miami 10; Week 3, N.Y. Jets 24, New England 3; Seattle 24, Miami 3; Week 5: Washington 34, Cleveland 13, Week 6, Green Bay 34, Arizona 13
20: Week 6, Houston 41, New England 21
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