Stout, you and I are on the same page. I just don’t see the optimism. The offense went into a cocoon after losing Hopkins. The defense is facing the same deficiencies as last year , maybe worse, and we are facing crazy good offenses this year.
I just don’t see it.
Can we all be just a little honest. As long suffering fans, have we ever really gone into a season being truly optimistic? Even during the best of era’s, either injuries, our D, or our coaching would somehow expose us. During the Coryell years, the D was atrocious. If the offense didn’t bring their A game, we lost. And that pretty much happened in playoffs both in 74 & 75. The same could be said when Lomax was at the top of his game. The D always let us down in crunch time.
The Whiz/Warner years were pretty much the same story. As explosive as the offense could be, we all knew the D would lay an egg when push came to shove. Probably the best opportunity this team had to get to the pinnacle were the early BA years when DWeed was in his prime, Bowles was the DC, and the offense had weapons around around Palmer. And then, not only do we lose Palmer, but we lose our backup too.
And last year, injuries hit the OL, DL, QB, RB, Secondary, etc. And we don’t even have to elaborate on some bad coaching on BOTH sides of the ball when it counted. So, what will this year bring? We do have talent on this team. We would be wrong to discount that. You don’t go 10-2 without being a pretty damn good team. As always though, as Cardinal fans, we’ve been conditioned to pray for the best & expect the worst. I guess it’s just all part of being in love with a cursed franchise.
