Before the 2015 season started, our good friend Tom gave us a season preview, here he is post-Regular season with a quick recap:
So, the 2015 NFL season has been very successful for the Arizona Cardinals – a franchise-record 13 wins, being able to reclaim the NFC West crown from those pesky Seattle Seahawks and clinching a first round bye in the process. All well and good from a regular season but it matters not if they don’t do some damage in the postseason.
Heading into the season, I said that the 8.5 wins that Vegas had stuck on the Arizona Cardinals was very low and that proved to be the case as they cruised to that win total and then some more; slight hiccups along the way with losses to St Louis, a Landry Jones-led Pittsburgh Steelers and then ‘that’ meaningless Week 17 thing vs the Seahawks. When a team wins 13 games and has players in the hunt for some of the bigger awards like MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, it’s hard to be disappointed with what they have achieved this season.
Outside of those losses, the biggest disappointment this season had to have been the loss of then-Defensive Player of the Year front-runner (well, at least in my unbiased eyes) Tyrann Mathieu as he tore his ACL and was ruled out for the remainder of the season. Due to the sheer depth in the defensive backfield, the Cardinals have coped without one of their biggest playmakers but it’s still a cruel blow to lose him on what was an innocuous play.
It doesn’t end the teams hopes for this season, it just makes them that little bit more difficult. All I can do is hope that they don’t collapse vs. the Packers in the upcoming Divisional Round – otherwise it’ll be another case of “What if” for the 2015 Arizona Cardinals….as it was for the 2014 Arizona Cardinals before them.
This team is good. Very good. But is it great? We’ll find out soon enough…
You can follow Thomas Donlan at @Cardinals_UK #UKCardsFans