Big Red
Well-known member
- Mar 16, 2019
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“I was fixing to have a big game,” said Jones, who insisted he wasn’t thinking about having an outside shot at Michael Strahan’s NFL record 22½ sacks in a season.
The other player fixing to have a big game was Drake, who busted off an 80-yard touchdown run the first play after the Seahawks’ initial scoring drive, allowing the Cardinals to get back some balance and a second chance for the defense to hold up.
The Cardinals rushed for 253 yards, the third time they have cracked the 200-yard mark as a team this season and the second straight game. They averaged 6.3 yards a carry, and leaned on the run heavily after Murray went out.
Murry got hurt on a third-down scramble right before a Zane Gonzalez field goal put the Cards up 20-7 with 11:36 left in the third quarter. So much game remained. Yet Hundley stepped forward, completing key passes like a 28-yarder to tight end Maxx Williams, and scrambling for gains of 12 and 14 yards on the final touchdown drive.
Kingsbury said it was important for the offense to remain aggressive even with Hundley in the game, and “he found a way to get it done.”
The Seahawks felt some momentum with Murray’s injury and then a later blocked field goal that gave Seattle the ball at the Arizona 16 down just 10 points with plenty of time left.
But on third-and-short, linebacker Jordan Hicks shot through the line to take down third-string running back Travis Homer, and the Seahawks were forced to kick a field goal. Quarterback Russell Wilson and crew never were able to score a touchdown again after that opening drive, and the Cardinals’ rushing total of 253 yards were more than the Seahawks had in total yards (224).
“In the words of P2 (Patrick Peterson), we’ve heard the chatter,” Hicks said. “We’ve heard the talk. At the end of the day, this defense has stuck together, this defense has gone to work every single day, in the dark times, in the good times, and we’ve leaned on each other. We knew we were dangerous when we did things right. It was a matter of continuously getting better.”
Murray, who completed 11-of-18 passes for 118 yards and a touchdown to Larry Fitzgerald along with 40 rushing yards before he got hurt, was mostly disappointed that it took as long as it did for the offense to start clicking this season.
“It’s unfortunate how bad we were in the beginning of the year,” Murray said. “I feel so much more confident … and I think it’s pretty evident, so easy to tell.”
Whether or not Murray will get a chance to expand on that process in the last game is to-be-determined. But the Cardinals will revel in another win in Seattle nonetheless.
“To able to point to something ... knocking off the top seed we can definitely point to that and try to build off it," Kingsbury said.
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