Arizona Cardinals 2024 season in trouble. Here's why

On one side of State Farm Stadium, disgusted home fans turned away en masse, forging their early path toward the exits. On the other side, delighted visitors broke out in chants and cheers, celebrating another step towards the rebirth of their franchise.

Throughout it all, the Cardinals coaching staff began its postmortem, discussing the previous three disastrous hours over their headsets. The final moments of a 42-14 loss to the Commanders were still unfolding in front of them, but the coaches needed to process it all to understand how this day had gone so wrong.

“It was a good conversation,” head coach Jonathan Gannon said. “Where everyone's looking in the mirror and saying, ‘Hey, we've gotta do a better job, we've gotta figure it out together.’”

That’s the type of day it was for the Cardinals as they fell to 1-3 on the season. Here’s what we learned in the loss:

MCMANAMAN : Loss to Commanders is beginning of end

The season is in serious trouble

Forget, for a moment, how Sunday’s loss transpired. We’ll get to that, because it was bad. But regardless of the circumstances, the Cardinals desperately needed a win.

After the loss, Kyler Murray tried to warn against that thinking.

“It's one game,” he said. “The season's not over.”

It was one crucial game, though. The next two weeks feature trips to San Francisco and Green Bay. The most likely outcome is that the Cardinals will hit mid-October with a 1-5 record.

Eventually, the schedule does ease up. In the second half, they’ll face teams like the Bears, Patriots, and Panthers. But two weeks ago, this looked like a team that could make a playoff push. For that to be the case, they needed to make it through this early-season gauntlet with a passable record. Losing to the Commanders made that task much more difficult.

NO ANSWERS : Daniels, Commanders dominated Cardinals

Cardinals offense hasn’t done its job

The optimistic outlook for this Cardinals season rested squarely on the shoulders of its offense. And through two weeks, that version came to pass. They scored 69 points in those first two games, ranking second in the league.

Since then, they’ve managed 13 and 14 points, respectively. It’s the lowest-scoring two-game stretch the Cardinals have had with a healthy Murray since his rookie season. Making matters worse, this latest effort came against Washington, which entered with a defense widely considered one of the league’s worst.

Last week, the culprit was obvious: The Cardinals couldn’t run the ball, forcing their offense to become one-dimensional. This week, they were effective on the ground but still couldn’t unlock a deep passing attack, even against a poor secondary. Their longest play of the game went for just 22 yards.

“We just didn't do a great job of creating explosive plays,” receiver Michael Wilson said.

The Cardinals had few explanations for those struggles. But given the construction of this roster — with a $230 million quarterback, a star running back, and a No. 4 overall pick wide receiver — their production wasn’t sufficient.

Marvin Harrison Jr. and the receivers didn’t do enough

In their first three games, the Commanders allowed 83 yards to Chris Godwin, 127 yards to Malik Nabers, and 118 yards to Ja’Maar Chase. Their defense has been exploitable by high-end pass catchers, especially deep downfield.

Given that the Cardinals prefer to deploy Harrison as a deep threat, it seemed like a perfect matchup. Instead, neither he nor the other Cardinals pass catchers managed to impact the game.

Harrison led the way but still finished with just five catches for 45 yards on six targets. Murray also struggled to find his receivers, but the reality was that they didn’t get open often enough. The Cardinals only attempted one pass of over 20 air yards, and it was a go route to a well-covered Wilson.

In the passing game, the final product was similar to Week 1 in Buffalo, when the Cardinals were forced to keep everything underneath. But after that game, players and coaches credited the Bills’ defensive game plan. On Sunday, they could only point the finger back at themselves.

“Player execution,” Harrison said. “That's what it comes down to. Eleven-on-11, you've gotta win your one-on-one as a player.”

Cardinals secondary has not been good enough

Entering the season, concern justifiably swirled surrounding the Cardinals’ pass rush. They made few moves to address the unit in the offseason and, on paper, had one of the league’s worst groups.

But while that group has not been particularly effective — they recorded no sacks Sunday — the Cardinals’ biggest defensive problem has been their secondary.

Take Sunday as an example. Per Pro Football Focus, the Cardinals pressured Jayden Daniels on 12 of 36 dropbacks. But on those 12 passes, Daniels went 10-for-10 for 96 yards. So far this season, the Cardinals are allowing 10.8 yards per attempt when they create pressure. That’s an abysmal number, and it falls on the inability of their secondary to cover receivers downfield.

It’s not just accomplished receivers that are dominating the Cardinals, either. On Sunday, they allowed 85 yards to Olamide Zaccheaus, who has averaged 20.3 yards per game in his career.

Cardinals hurt themselves with playcalling

Early in the game — back when it was still competitive — the Cardinals faced four plays of either third-and-1 or fourth-and-1. They passed the ball on three of those four plays.

It worked once — when Murray hit Harrison on a corner route in the back of the end zone to punctuate the first drive. The next two times were not as productive. On the Cardinals’ third drive, Murray tried to hit Wilson on a third-and-1 dig route, but the pass was broken up. On their fourth drive, he couldn’t find an open receiver — the Cardinals dialed up a man-beater but the Commanders surprised them by dropping into zone — and Murray was sacked for a turnover on downs.

Given that James Conner averaged 5.8 yards on 18 carries, the commitment to passing in short-yardage situations was a surprising move that stymied multiple drives. Afterward, Gannon defended the decisions, saying they were the “best play” each time.

On Sunday, they didn’t have much competition for the title of "best play".

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Cardinals 2024 season in trouble. Here's why