Rapid Reactions to Cardinals' Eye-Opening Loss to 49ers

What a frustrating way to lose a game.

The Arizona Cardinals couldn’t get out of their own way in a blowout loss to the San Francisco 49ers, and it’s a shame considering how fun they were at times.

The Cardinals had one of their best passing days in years, giving fans a reason to watch the offense. Some other players had standout performances, but as a whole this game was a tough one to stomach.

I have some quick thoughts to toss out there after sitting through that outing. I came away thinking many different things: “This offense could be fun to watch,” and “What happened to last year’s stingy defense?” or “Is something going on behind closed doors?”

Although I don’t have time to answer all of these questions, here's four rapid reactions - and to start things off, I'm a fan of Jacoby Brissett.

Jacoby Brissett can keep games interesting

An NFL-record 47 completions with nine different players catching a pass. Brissett managed to complete 82.5% of his passes and tossed more than 400 yards. His two interceptions were not ideal.

This makes for a nice box score, and one that fantasy football players loved to see (shoutout for getting me a win, Jacoby!). But more than anything, it makes the Cardinals’ offense worth watching.

It was anything but perfect, but fans got to see some of the best quarterback play they have in a long time from a box score perspective, and it was fun to watch. How many games will Brissett win? That’s hard to say, but at least we will have something to tune into!

Michael Wilson needs more targets

We’ve been waiting to see if Wilson can handle a bigger workload and embrace the role as a WR2 for a while. There have been plenty of glimpses of Wilson being capable of handling that role or if he’s best off as a role player.

His performance against the Niners answered that question for us. We saw Wilson on full display with a plethora of targets and a quarterback who can get him the ball. It was Wilson’s best day as a pro, and it had us wanting more.

With Brissett under center for the foreseeable future, and given the performance he just had passing, we would like to see Wilson continue to get looks. Sure, he had an uptick because Marvin Harrison Jr. was on the mend, but he showed more than enough to warrant his own target share.

Walter Nolen, Josh Sweat are the keys to turning the defense around

Sweat had another sack for the Cardinals to push his season total to nine. The rest of the defense has combined for ten, so he’s very literally carrying this pass rush. Given he’s still under 30 years old, he is the future of this pass rush for years to come.

Cardinals fans have to be thrilled with how Nolen has looked since he returned from injury. Nolen tacked on two tackles for loss in the losing effort, and he’s looked strong in three games.

As the Cardinals continue to work out their defensive struggles, what we do know is that Sweat and Nolen are long-term solutions to getting this defense back on track.

The Cardinals might have a coaching problem

I’ll start things off by saying that I don’t believe Jonathan Gannon is the biggest problem with the Cardinals. I also don’t believe firing him is the answer to a turnaround. However, we have to have some difficult conversations about his future in the desert.

Arizona was flagged 17 times in this loss, and whether you agreed with them or not that’s a HUGE problem. The Cardinals as a whole this year have not played very disciplined football, and it certainly seems like at least some of the team has checked out.

I’m not ready to fire Gannon, and honestly I’m not ready to fire Drew Petzing considering the offensive turnaround they’ve seen since Brissett took over. But some very, very difficult conversations need to be started regarding the future direction of this team.

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