Cardinals loss to 49ers falls on offense

Undefeated no more.

Despite having plenty of chances to take home a Week 3 victory over the San Francisco 49ers, the Arizona Cardinals instead fall to 2-1 after a 16-15 loss in Santa Clara.

Now, it’s onto a short week of preparation before taking on the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday Night Football.

But before we completely turn the page to Week 4, Arizona Sports hosts have some reacting to get off their chests.

Let’s just say the offense has some explaining to do:

Rapid Reactions: Cardinals lose to 49ers

Vince Marotta, co-host of Bickley & Marotta:

After wins in each of the first two weeks of the season, we heard the Cardinals talk a lot about finishing games more effectively. They had the opportunity to do so Sunday but couldn’t make the necessary plays down the stretch in a painful 16-15 loss to the 49ers.

Leading 15-13 with around two minutes to go, the Cardinals tried to move on the ground. A designed Kyler Murray got a yard. A second-down run from Trey Benson was stuffed for no gain. Following the two-minute warning and facing a 3rd-and-9 from midfield, Drew Petzing called a pass play. Murray had time and delivered the ball downfield to Zay Jones, who couldn’t come down with the catch as San Francisco defensive back Upton Stout wrestled it away as they fell to the turf. They punted the ball back to the Niners and Mac Jones guided them into field goal range for Eddy Piñeiro’s 35-yard game-winner as time expired.

Defensively, the Cardinals played more than well enough to win. The offense is a mess. Arizona gained only 260 yards against the 49ers. The passing game lacked anything down the field for most of the game. The running game is a slog and now James Conner is likely gone for the season after suffering a gruesome ankle injury. The offensive line has not opened up running lanes for any of the backs.

There was so much talk in the offseason about the Cardinals not upgrading their wide receiver position. Three weeks into the season, that was clearly a mistake. People wondered if Michael Wilson is a legitimate No. 2 NFL receiver. He’s been decent, but the bigger missing ingredient is a No. 1 wide receiver. Marvin Harrison Jr. continues to struggle and the chemistry between he and Murray remains in rough draft mode. MHJ had a huge drop on a play down the field and couldn’t come down with a pass in the end zone, but he wasn’t the only one who failed to help his QB. Emari Demercado dropped a swing pass inside the San Francisco 10-yard line and the Cardinals had to settle for a field goal. We already mentioned Jones not making a big catch on the Cardinals’ last third down.

The offensive attack still looks really vanilla and if the Cardinals don’t figure out their run blocking issues soon, this will be a long season.

Dave Burns, co-host of Burns & Gambo

The Cardinals offense has yet to crack 300 yards in a game this season, a fact that has not felt more urgent or relevant than it does right now. The defense sold themselves out to win a football game today against a division rival. Goal-line stand. Crucial turnover. Go-ahead safety. Everything you could possibly ask. So, when the offense came back to them for one more favor, just one more stop, they didn’t have it in them.

Jonathan Gannon, Drew Petzing and Kyler Murray are rapidly approaching a reckoning point when it comes to how the offense plans to do their share. They were going to reach this point anyway, whether they lost James Conner for the season or not because clearly, they can’t run the ball the way they did last year. And in the absence of that, the dink/dunk nature of the offense just won’t work. Does this mean changes on the offensive line to juice up the running game? Does Trey Benson inject some life into the affair? Or is it time to attack downfield more? If so, can you count on Marvin Harrison Jr. (and others to be sure) to hang on to the ball? And yeah, a short week isn’t ideal for a back-to-the-drawing-board moment, but these are the questions that need to be answered.

Many thought the ultimate goal of the offseason was to change the Cardinals into that of a team that wins game because of their defense. Watching this offense sputter through these first three games makes me wonder if they did too good of a job.

Kellan Olson, co-host of Arizona Sports at Night

A lot of situational moments in the fourth quarter decided this one but ultimately Arizona’s inability to do anything consistently on offense besides dink-and-dunk passing was the overall story and what will keep this team perfectly mid the rest of the season.

The running game was yet again a disaster, with an awful-looking James Conner injury creating an even more ominous tone coming out of the game. The tape will tell the story of whether the mix of blame in the passing game is leaning more toward the play-calling, no one getting open or Kyler Murray not seeing the space. Whatever it is has become unacceptable. The drops sure didn’t help and negated what was another good performance by Murray.

Arizona could at times rely on this death-by-a-thousand-cuts style with a great running game, but they don’t even have a good one, let alone an average one. Now the Cardinals have to recreate their offensive identity, and by not addressing the offensive line or skill positions in the offseason, they have left themselves an even smaller margin of error when doing so. What’s even worse is two more key Marvin Harrison Jr. drops was a return back to him looking pedestrian and a separate Murray throw indicated this duo is still somehow not on the same page.

The defense, Nick Rallis and key plays by a handful of individuals should be spotlighted. But even then, that’s what it should more or less look like when you’re facing Mac Jones down his top three pass-catchers outside of Christian McCaffrey. The depleted secondary did a great job up until the last drive, when soft coverage for the third straight final possession of the year finally did Arizona in.

All said, it is difficult not to mostly be a curmudgeon after a loss like that and a dozen quarters of football like that when this should be a transformative season in some type of way. It sure doesn’t feel like that, does it?

Tyler Drake, co-host of Cardinals Corner

Another week, another lackluster offensive showing.

Sloppy and inconsistent continue to be the calling card of the Cardinals offense three games.

It was able to hide some of those blemished against lesser opponents across the first two weeks of the season.

That was far from the case against the 49ers.

Had it not been for yet another strong defensive showing from Calais Campbell and others, this game was a 49ers blowout waiting to happen.

Now, the Cardinals will likely have to move forward down running back James Conner after what looked like a multi-week ankle injury. He was far and away the heart and soul of the offense.

Any missed time is only going to stunt this unit that much more if things don’t turn around in a hurry.

And for all the conversation regarding Marvin Harrison Jr.’s targets, another easy drop stands out far more than the seeing his first target with just 1:10 left in the first quarter.

The same goes for running back Emari Demercado and his glaring drop. Both had a chance to go the distance. The misses were huge in deciding the outcome of this one.

Two things must change moving forward if this team wants to turn things around in a hurry: Run the rock and push the football down the field.

The horizontal offense we’ve all seen three games in is not going to cut it.

And guess what? The nasty Seattle Seahawks defense is up next on a short week. Gulp.

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