In Week 6 of last season, Jacoby Brissett started for the Cardinals for the first time in place of an injured Kyler Murray. What Brissett has done since then is something no one would have expected: Brissett has led the NFL in passing yards.
After his 277-yard game in Sunday’s win over the Chargers, Brissett now has 3,643 passing yards in 13 games since becoming the Cardinals’ starter. That’s the most of any quarterback in the league during that time.
Brissett ranks ahead of Jared Goff (3,583 yards), Dak Prescott (3,371 yards) and Matthew Stafford (3,359 yards), who are the quarterbacks with the next-most passing yards since Week 6 of last season.
Although the Cardinals were not a good football team down the stretch last year, Brissett has played well, completing 65.6 percent of his passes, with 24 touchdowns and eight interceptions.
Brissett won’t have an easy task on Sunday, with the Seahawks coming to Arizona, but after the Cardinals’ upset of the Chargers on Sunday, this Cardinals team may be better than people think, with a quarterback who’s better than people think.
Cardinals Clips
The Cowboys have added a running back.
Dallas announced the club has signed Tyler Goodson off of Atlanta’s practice squad.
Goodson, 25, has previously spent time with the Packers and Colts, though all of his regular-season playing time has come with Indianapolis.
Last year, Goodson appeared in 11 games for the Colts, rushing for 24 yards while catching two passes for 8 yards. Most of his playing time has come on special teams throughout his career.
As a corresponding move, the Cowboys have waived running back Israel Abanikanda.
The 49ers’ Week 1 win over the Rams resulted in a shift in betting odds, but perhaps not as big a shift as some would think.
The Rams remain the favorites to win the Super Bowl, as they were before the season. The Rams’ Super Bowl odds dropped to +650 from their preseason odds of +500, but they’re still the favorites to win it all.
The 49ers, however, are now the favorites to win the NFC West. The 49ers’ odds are +160 to win the division, followed by the Seahawks at +175 and Rams at +205. The Cardinals are extreme long shots at +4500.
The 49ers’ odds to win the Super Bowl are +1400, tied with the Chiefs for the fifth-best chance of winning the title.
Why would the Rams be first in Super Bowl odds but third in division odds? It’s ultimately about how good the oddsmakers think the Rams will be by the time the postseason rolls around. Right now, with Myles Garrett on injured reserve and Aaron Donald yet to play, it’s easy to see the Rams starting slow and falling behind in the division. But if they make the playoffs at all, the Rams should be a tough team to beat.
The Rams may have to go on the road in the playoffs, but no one should dismiss their chances of winning it all.
The Cardinals pulled off the biggest upset of Week 1, but Monday wasn’t a day for reveling in their 26-14 win over the Chargers.
Head coach Mike LaFleur’s message was about the next game on the schedule rather than on rehashing all that went right in his Arizona debut. The Cardinals will face the Seahawks in Week 2 and the coach said that he is drilling down on the message that the Cardinals have to start back from square one as they prepare to host the defending champs.
“Confidence is great, but like I told them today, ‘We got to reset and get right back to work,’” LaFleur said, via the team’s website. “This is a week-to-week league, and your goal is to go 1-0 every weekend. We’re not going to talk anything past that. Obviously we got the result, but we’re right back to work.”
LaFleur’s directive met a willing recipient in wide receiver Kendrick Bourne. He acknowledged that “building from success is better” than the alternative, but added that the team has to hone “little details” in order to be more than a one-week wonder.
The silver lining in the dark cloud of a quarterback injury is the potential strategic advantage it can create.
And the Seahawks seem to be leaning fully into the potential uncertainty flowing from Sam Darnold’s Week 1 mishap, which reportedly caused a strained glute tendon.
Via Andrew Destin of The Athletic, a Seahawks spokesperson said Monday that Darnold has a “very unique, soft-tissue injury.” The Seahawks call it “short term,” but they also acknowledged there is “no firm timeline.”
On Sunday, we reported that Darnold could be out four to six weeks.
The Seahawks have no obligation to say anything about Darnold, beyond the rules of the injury report. And that’s a basic, bare-bones mandate — whether and to what extent he practiced on three days before a given game (limited or full) and, in the final report, whether he’s questionable, doubtful, or out.
Teams love to force opposing defenses to prepare for multiple quarterbacks. If Darnold does enough on Wednesday, Thursday, and/or Friday to be described as participating in practice on a “limited” basis, they can keep the Cardinals guessing as to whether it will be Darnold or Drew Lock on Sunday.
And the Seahawks can keep doing that until Darnold returns.
Whatever the specific problem, it was sufficiently unique and confounding to result in up to four second opinions, as Jay Glazer of Fox Sports reported on Sunday. The thinking is they’ll be cautious with Darnold, given that their team is good enough to win without him — and given the risk that he could suffer an aggravation that extends his absence.
The Cardinals weren’t picked to win on Sunday. In fact, they were the biggest underdog in Week 1 at 9.5 points.
None of that mattered to the Cardinals.
They beat the Chargers 26-14 in a game that was never close, giving Mike LaFleur a win in his debut.
LaFleur, 39, was not even born the last time a Cardinals coach won his debut. Don Coryell was the last to do it, winning his Cardinals’ debut in 1973 when the franchise was still in St. Louis.
The 12 coaches after Coryell all lost their debut.
“I told the guys, ‘Humility is a day away in this league,’” LaFleur said, via Darren Urban of the team website.
The Chargers were 9.5-point favorites against the Cardinals today in Los Angeles, the biggest betting line in the NFL for Week 1. No one thought this was a game Arizona would win.
But that’s why they play the games.
In a major upset that may force us to reassess what we thought we knew about both teams, the Cardinals went to Los Angeles and beat the Chargers 26-14.
First-year Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur deserves an enormous amount of credit for having his team ready to play, and Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh will face plenty of questions about why his team wasn’t. Harbaugh had previously been 6-0 in Week 1 in his NFL coaching career.
Cardinals quarterback Jacoby Brissett played well, completing 27 of 37 passes for 277 yards, with one touchdown and no interceptions. His favorite receiver was Trey McBride, who caught nine passes for 95 yards and a touchdown. The Cardinals surprisingly made Tyler Allgeier, not rookie Jeremiyah Love, their primary ball carrier.
Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert turned in a highly disappointing performance, completing 17 of 27 passes for 209 yards, with one touchdown and one interception. And the Chargers’ running game never got going. Also alarming for the Chargers is that wide receiver Ladd McConkey suffered a chest injury late in the game and went to the locker room.
The Cardinals also had a concerning injury when safety Kitan Crawford was carted off during the fourth quarter, but today was mostly great news in Arizona: This team looks better than anyone thought.
Jeremiyah Love was questionable to play in the season opener today after coming back from a high-ankle sprain. The rookie running back is playing and scored his first touchdown on the 11th play of the season.
Love ran in from 5 yards, giving the Cardinals a 7-0 lead after a 70-yard drive.
He has three carries for 8 yards.
Jacoby Brissett went 3-for-4 for 43 yards on the drive, including a 27-yarder to Trey McBride, and the quarterback also ran for 13 yards on two carries.
The Chargers now get their first shot with the ball.
The Seahawks have taken the concept of a second opinion to the next level. And the next. And the next.
Via Jay Glazer of Fox Sports, Seattle is “gathering four second opinions” regarding the injury suffered on Wednesday night by quarterback Sam Darnold. Glazer explains that the injury is to a tendon in Darnold’s glute. The initial fear was a season-ending fractured hip socket.
The purpose of the multitude of opinions is to determine Darnold’s expected absence, along with devising the plan of attack for getting him back to full strength.
For now, Darnold will miss the Week 2 game at Arizona. Beyond that, Darnold’s availability remains to be seen.
Drew Lock presumably will be the starter in Darnold’s absence; the Seahawks also have 2025 third-rounder Jalen Milroe on the roster.
The quarterback whom Jim Harbaugh believes will be remembered as the greatest of all time has a chance to join the all-time greats on Sunday.
With 180 passing yards, Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert will reach 25,000 yards for his career. It would make him the fourth-fastest quarterback in NFL history to get there, via NBC Sports research.
Herbert, if he does it, will have done it in 96 games. Patrick Mahomes got there in 83. Matthew Stafford crossed the 25K boundary in 90 games. And Dan Marino did it in 92.
It’ll take much more than statistical achievements to earn “GOAT” status for Herbert. His first career playoff win, for example, would be a useful starting point.
Before that can happen, the Chargers have to qualify for the playoffs again. In a very competitive division and a conference featuring multiple wild-card contenders, it won’t be easy. Between the Bills, Patriots, Bengals, Ravens, Steelers, Texans, Jaguars, Broncos, Chiefs, and Chargers, at least three will have their seasons end in Week 18.
