Cardinals Clips
Cardinals wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. caught only one pass in his team’s win over the Chargers on Sunday, which Harrison says was a result of Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh focusing the defense on shutting him down.
Harrison played three years at Ohio State when Harbaugh was Michigan’s head coach, and Harrison said Harbaugh game plans for him.
“I’m familiar with Harbaugh, going up against the team up north for many years, and how they played me a lot of the time, and they still hjave the same respect for me,” Harrison said. “So I had a feeling going into the game that I wasn’t going to see many one-high looks.”
Harrison’s one catch was for 33 yards, and he said that was one of the few plays when the Chargers’ coverage wasn’t designed to shut him down.
“We threw the go ball and completed that one,” Harrison said. “We’re not going to get many opportunities, but when we did we capitalized on the way we had. It’s a part of the game, everybody’s going to have their weeks, have their days, but at the end of the day the team won, and all you can do is your part.”
Harrison is in his third season and so far hasn’t developed into the All-Pro receiver he was expected to be when he was starring at Ohio State. At some point, he needs to find a way to make more plays, no matter what the defense is doing.
The Seahawks will ride with quarterback Drew Lock until Sam Darnold returns from a glute injury. And Lock’s teammates have no problem with that.
"[W]e all have faith in Drew,” defensive lineman Leonard Williams told reporters on Wednesday. “We believe that he’s the best second-string quarterback in the league. Since I’ve been here, before he went to the Giants, he stepped up big time. I remember that Eagles game a few years back where he stepped up and won us the game. He’s done it and shown it multiple times now. That has instilled a lot of trust in his teammates and his team.”
After three years with the Broncos, Lock spent two in Seattle. He signed with the Giants for 2024 before returning to the Seahawks in 2025.
And Lock did indeed have a special night against the Eagles in December 2023. Starting in place of Geno Smith, Lock threw a touchdown pass to receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba with 28 seconds to play for a 20-17 win over Philly.
“He has a little bit of swagger to him,” Williams said regarding Lock. “He’s confident, he’s ready for the moment. When it’s time for him to be called up, there’s no lag, there’s no hesitation. He’s ready for it. It’s cool to see because I can’t imagine what it’s like to be in that position as a backup quarterback. You may not see the field all season but at any moment you have to be ready to go in there and operate and lead the offense. He does a great job of that, not skipping a beat.”
This week, Lock knows he’ll be playing against the Cardinals. The duration of his assignment remains to be seen.
The Seahawks will not have Sam Darnold back in the lineup for Week 2.
Head coach Mike Macdonald said at his Wednesday press conference that Darnold has been ruled out for this week’s game against the Cardinals. Drew Lock will start in Arizona on Sunday afternoon.
Darnold left last Wednesday’s game against the Patriots in the first half with what was called a hip injury at the time and was later updated to a glute tendon issue. There was word that Darnold could miss a month or more due to the injury, but Macdonald said that the Seahawks do not plan to place him on injured reserve.
Macdonald also said that the Seahawks do not anticipate adding another quarterback to go with Lock or Jalen Milroe while Darnold is out of action.
Wide receiver Simi Fehoko helped the Cardinals get their 2026 season off on the right foot.
Fehoko blocked a punt with the Cardinals up two points in the fourth quarter last Sunday and that play set up a touchdown that helped them on their way to a 26-14 win over the Chargers. The Chargers were the biggest favorites in the league heading into Week 1.
Fehoko also had a tackle while covering a kick earlier in the game. He was named the NFC special teams player of the week on Wednesday.
It’s Fehoko’s second season with the Cardinals. He had seven tackles while playing special teams last season.
The Cardinals will be without one of their young contributors for at least the next four weeks.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Arizona is placing safety Kitan Crawford on injured reserve.
Crawford was carted off the field during Sunday’s victory over the Chargers. He has a mid-ankle sprain and is expected to return during the season.
Crawford played 14 special teams snaps and seven defensive snaps in Week 1.
A seventh-round pick in the 2025 draft, Crawford appeared in 15 games with one start as a rookie last year, recording 20 total tackles and one pass defensed.
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.
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.
