Chargers Scouting Report: Cardinals
When the Chargers open their 55th season Monday night in Glendale, Ariz., it’ll be as a betting-line underdog.
Oddsmakers made the Cardinals a three-point favorite, which may be encouraging news for the Chargers.
San Diego won six of 10 games as a betting underdog last season. And in four road contests, Mike McCoy’s squad upset a team favored by 3.5 points or more: the Eagles (7.5), Chiefs (3.5), Broncos (10.0) and Bengals (7.0).
The Cardinals have lost their last three regular-season games with the Chargers, most recently a 41-10 decision at Qualcomm Stadium in October 2010.
Arizona is 2-6 versus San Diego. It took a Jake Plummer-led drive to give Arizona its last win over the Chargers, a 20-17 decision in November 2001 in Mission Valley.
The Cardinals expect their 86th consecutive sellout for Monday night’s contest. Kickoff is 7:20 p.m. at University of Phoenix Stadium.
Arians and Keim
The Cardinals, like the Chargers, are coming off a breakout season engineered by a first-year General Manager and first-year head coach.
GM Steve Keim, a former offensive lineman who’s friendly with fellow N.C. State alum Philip Rivers, worked 15 years in Arizona’s personnel department. Two of his best pickups as GM were quarterback Carson Palmer and running back Andre Ellington.
Keim also hired Bruce Arians as head coach.
Arians was the Steelers’ play-calling coordinator from 2007-’11, during which Pittsburgh won two AFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl. Filling in for leukemia-stricken Colts head coach Chuck Pagano in 2012, he guided Indianapolis to the playoffs.
Arizona won 10 games last year, a total unsurpassed in the franchise’s last 38 seasons dating to its St. Louis roots. The five-win jump from ’12 matched the best one-season turnaround in team history in a 16-game season.
All it got the Cardinals, however, was third place in the NFC West.
Defense takes hits
When the NFL schedule came out in April, oddsmakers favored the Cardinals by 3.5 points over San Diego.
The half-point change may reflect offseason blows to Arizona’s defense, the team’s best unit last year.
Linebacker Daryl Washington, who appeared in 99.1 percent of the defense’s snaps in the 12 games he started last season, was lost for the year to a drug-related suspension. He covered a lot of ground at inside linebacker.
Also out is tackle Darnell Dockett, who tore an ACL on Aug. 18. A third starter, safety Tyrann Mathieu, reportedly won’t play Monday, though he practiced this week. Tears in two knee ligaments ended his ’13 season last December.
Edge rusher John Abraham is expected to play, but Abraham, the team’s sack leader in 2013, reportedly spent the first 19 days of training camp in a rehab clinic following his June DUI arrest.
Firepower
Arians’ offense is built on downfield passing. As with Hines Ward (Steelers) and Reggie Wayne (Colts), he uses motion to create angles for WR Larry Fitzgerald, an eight-time Pro Bowler who has great hands but is 31. The better deep threat is fellow 6-foot-3 WR Michael Floyd, 24; he had 14 receptions of at least 20 yards last year, 10 more than Fitzgerald. Arizona employs several quick playmakers in Ellington, rookie WR John Brown and Ted Ginn. CB Patrick Peterson earned first-team All-Pro honors last year.
Palmer, 34, is the only quarterback to exceed 4,000 yards passing with three franchises (Bengals, Raiders, Cardinals). Fronting the 6-foot-5 pocket passer is a line that’s long on grit and short on athleticism. Palmer can be clunky in his pocket movements. His release isn’t as quick as Rivers’. Last season he had 24 TDs, 22 interceptions and an 83.9 passer rating.
