GLENDALE, Ariz. — Despite being on the verge of potentially clinching a playoff spot Sunday, frustration began boiling over for the Arizona Cardinals after Saturday night’s 22-16 loss to the Indianapolis Colts.
A series of penalties and missed kicks led to the Cardinals’ third-straight loss and fifth in their last eight games.
“We feel it, you see it,” quarterback Kyler Murray said. “It’s just good teams don’t do that and we weren’t doing that early on in the season, and now you see, it’s killing us in crucial moments where we’re just not scoring touchdowns because of it, or vice versa, on the other side of the ball.
“As a collective group, offensively and defensively, like it’s just mental mistakes that you just can’t keep making if we want to win these games that we know we’re supposed to be winning. I mean, it’s bad football.”
Arizona had 11 penalties for 85 yards and kicker Matt Prater missed three kicks — two field goals and an extra point — to leave seven, potentially game-deciding, points on the field.
Yet, they’re still in position to clinch a playoff berth Sunday if either of the New Orleans Saints, Philadelphia Eagles or Minnesota Vikings lose. It’ll be Arizona’s first playoff berth since 2015, when they lost in the NFC championship game to the Carolina Panthers.
But Murray says he doesn’t want to be playing the type of football Arizona has been lately heading into the postseason.
“All you gotta do is get in,” he said. “That’s all you got to do. But, at the end of the day, we don’t want to get in playing the way we’re playing. We want to go in playing and feeling good about ourselves and what we’re doing. The thing about it is it’s fixable.
“We just got to look ourselves in the mirror, stop making these mistakes because that game was very winnable. But good teams don’t do that and right now we’re not doing what we need to do.”
Coach Kliff Kingsbury said the Cardinals “continue to find ways to lose critical situations and penalties and things of that…
Source : espn
