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Arizona Cardinals Fall To San Francisco 49ers In Finale

By Kevin Bonneville

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December 28, 2014; Santa Clara, CA, USA; Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians (left) hugs San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh (right) after the game at Levi

Despite their blowout last week, the Arizona Cardinals still had a chance at winning the NFC West, getting home-field advantage in the playoffs, and setting a franchise for wins in a season heading into today’s game against the San Francisco 49ers.

For awhile, it looked like all three things were going to happen as the Cardinals held a lead and the Seahawks were down to the Rams when both games went to halftime, but the Seahawks scored 20 unanswered points in the final 30 minutes of their game and the Cardinals failed to score in the second half of theirs as they fell to the Niners, 20-17.

Things couldn’t have gotten off to a better start for the road team. In one of the most impressive drives of the season, Ryan Lindley led an eight play, 80-yard drive which was finished off on a flea-flicker pass from Lindley to Michael Floyd for a 20-yard touchdown.

Unfortunately, that lead would last all of three plays. On a 3rd-and-8 from their own 24-yard line, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick found a wide open Anquan Boldin for a big 76-yard touchdown pass to even things up at seven.

Things would remind tied until early on in the second quarter when Niners kicker Phil Dawson knocked  through a 53-yard field goal, which barely got through. At first glance, it looked like a miss, but after seeing the replay, it was clearly good. The Niners would push their lead to six points later in the quarter thanks to another Dawson field goal.

It looked the Cardinals were going to go into the half trailing, but put together two nice looking drives to actually give themselves a 17-13 heading into the locker room for halftime.

Chandler Catanzaro knocked down a 36-yard field after a nice looking 12 play, 72-yard drive. After a quick three-and-out from Frisco, the Cardinals drove down for a touchdown, thanks in large part to a beautiful 41-yard leaping grab from Floyd to give the Cards the lead.

That would be all the scoring from the Cardinals offense on the afternoon. The 49ers defense was able to shut out the Cards offense out exactly like how the Cardinals did to the 49ers back in Glendale in Week Three.

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San Francisco’s offense didn’t light up the scoreboard, but their only touchdown of the second half, a three-yard touchdown pass from Kaepernick to Bruce Miller, was enough to give the Niners their eighth victory of the season and probably the final win of the John Harbaugh era. It appears he’s heading to his alma mater at Michigan to become their next head coach.

After dropping three of their final five games, the Cardinals are now the fifth seed in the NFC Playoffs as they’ll head to Carolina to face a suddenly hot Panthers team. The date and time of the game should be decided on by the league shortly.

Let’s move onto The Good, The Bad and The Ugly section shall we?

The Good

Considering how poorly he played week, I’m going to put Lindley on this list despite his three interceptions, all of which were really, really bad. If you expect to win on a road against a tough defense, you can’t turn the ball, but it’s hard to pin this loss on Lindley.

I think for the most part, Lindley played pretty well today and he gave his team a shot, which is all you can ask for from a guy who wasn’t even on this roster in the middle of the season. He made several big time throws, which for a time made me wonder if he switched jerseys with someone else.

You have to think that today’s performance has to help the confidence of a guy who more than likely is going to be the starter under center in Carolina next week.

It really is a shame that we haven’t seen that version of Floyd all season long. He was brilliant all day long as finished the afternoon with eight catches for 153 yards and a pair of scores. The former Notre Dame receiver also did a great job of breaking up a few of Lindley’s passes which looked like were going to be interceptions.

Now, let’s see if he can do this in back-to-back weeks. Consistency has been a major issue for Floyd so far in his pro career and with playing on the road next week with Lindley likely under center, they are going to need Floyd at his best in Carolina.

When the Cardinals did actually run the football, they were effective. Kerwynn Williams looked good as he had 67 yards on the ground on only 17 carries. The team as a whole had 98 rushing yards on 25 carries, which certainly isn’t great, but it’s certainly much better than what they were doing earlier in the season.

The Bad

I was going to Bruce Arians‘ playcalling in the above section after the game he called for the first two and a half quarters, but the way he called plays in the final 20 minutes or so makes me have to move it here.

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For the second straight week, Arians completely abandoned the run late in the game. In the fourth quarter, Arizona ran the ball twice for a total of nine yards in three drives. There’s just not excuse for that.

Like I said last week, it would be understandable if the game was out of hand, but the Cards were right there until the very end. Running the ball late also protects Lindley and doesn’t put the game solely on his shoulders.

Arians is a great coach and he should be a lock to win Coach of the Year, but his playcalling leaves you scratching your head at times.

The Ugly

Yeah, so the defense has not played well the last two weeks and that’s putting it nicely. It’s starting to be a major concern as a whole.

In what once was a huge strength, the run defense was poor for the second straight week. They allowed the Niners to gain 206 yards on the ground for an average of 6.2 yards per carry. Frank Gore, who has had 100+ yards on the ground only three times this season, had 144 rushing yards today.

Also like last week, Arizona’s tackling was extremely poor. There were several times where they had Kap dead to right for a big loss only for him to escape to either throw it away or for him to get positive yardage. They also allowed too many yards after the catch to Niners receivers.

The Cards D also did a very bad job at containing Kaepernick. Kap had 63 yards on the ground on only seven carries, which included a huge 30-yard gain. You would have thought that the Cards would have learned their lesson after last week’s game.

They better fix that issue quick. They face Cam Newton next week in Carolina.

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