Cardinals embrace Bruce Arians's vision, and Brady makes the doubters look dumb

Gamblers Arians and Palmer strike big in Arizona

Bruce Arians was not taking any credit for Arizona’s win over Philadelphia on Sunday. Although the Cardinals racked up 400 yards of total offence, more than 150 of those had come on two long passes, and the head coach blamed himself for the spluttering progress in between. “I’ll be brief,” promised Arians as he opened his post-game press conference, “so you can get to the guys who actually won the game and not the one that almost lost it.”

Such humility will always go down well, but was nevertheless misplaced. Arians might not have made all the right calls, but this Cardinals team continues to embrace his vision of how the game should be played.

“Don’t play scared, play smart,” runs the coach’s mantra – one that he has cited in countless interviews and press conferences since taking up his position last year. He repeated those words again on Sunday night as he reflected on the pass that won the game, a 75-yard bomb from Carson Palmer to John Brown that put Arizona up 24-20 with less than two minutes remaining.

It was a gutsy play. Down by three and facing third-and-five at their own 25-yard line, the obvious move for Arizona would have been to try something short, aiming simply to keep their drive going. But both Arians and his players knew Philadelphia’s players would have the same thought. They tricked Eagles safety Nate Allen with a double-move from receiver John Brown, who used his sprinter’s speed to tear past the defender and snare Carson Palmer’s deep heave.

Palmer might just be the perfect quarterback for Arians – not among the elite players at his position, by any means, but possessed with just the right combination of arm strength and aggression to take these kinds of gambles. As Dan Bickley put it for the Arizona Republic: “Both are allergic to playing it safe.”

General manager Steve Keim has surrounded Palmer with a variety of weapons – from the safe hands of veteran Larry Fitzgerald, who demonstrated his enduring athleticism as he raced away from defenders on an 80-yard score of his own, through to Brown, the rookie third-round pick who ran a 4.34sec 40-yard dash at this year’s Scouting Combine. Together, they are adding up to more than the sum of their parts.

The same could be said for a defence that ought to have been undermined by the season-ending injuries suffered by leaders Darnell Dockett and John Abraham. Arizona lost starting cornerback Patrick Peterson to a head injury in the second quarter on Sunday, and gave up an enormous 521 yards, but came up with three turnovers – including an interception in the end zone by Antonio Cromartie (which, with the help of some calamitous work from the Eagles, he ran out to near midfield).

Arizona improved to 6-1 with the victory, their best start to a season since 1974. They have not always been convincing, but you do not win this many games by chance. This team is growing into a contender in the NFC, by following their head coach’s lead. PB

Brady makes his doubters look silly (again)

Remember that time when a reporter asked Bill Belichick if Tom Brady’s poor performances would cause the New England Patriots head coach to re-evaluate his quarterback situation? It happened less than a month ago. Back then the 37-year-old appeared to be struggling, completing less than 60% of his passes and averaging a paltry 5.8 yards per attempt while giving up five turnovers through his team’s first four games.

But Brady has made a career out of making his doubters look silly. In four games since, the former sixth-round draft pick has connected on 69.4% of his throws, at an average of 8.8 yards per attempt. He has thrown for 14 touchdowns with no interceptions with just a single fumble – which a team-mate recovered. The Patriots have won all four of those games to position themselves at AFC East frontrunners at 6-2.

On Sunday Brady put in his most impressive performance of this season, completing a preposterous 30 of 35 passes for 354 yards during a 51-23 splattering of the Bears. He had as many touchdowns as he did incompletions.

So what changed? Well, for one thing, the blocking up front has been better. Only once in the last four games has Brady endured multiple sacks, compared to three times in the first four. The offensive line remains a work in progress, but has looked better with Jordan Devey dropped from the starting line-up, and Dan Connolly moved out from centre to guard.

Rob Gronkowski’s return to full health has also been a great boon, the tight end playing 224 snaps over the last four games compared to just 143 over the first four. Brady looked his way early and often against Chicago, the pair hooking up nine times for 149 yards and three scores.

There will also be talk of the quarterback drawing motivation from his critics, although that would probably be to attribute far too much importance to those of us who chirp from the sidelines. Brady has never been anything other than a tireless worker. More likely we are simply seeing him revert to his natural level, confounding those of us who suspected age was beginning to catch up to him.

Next Sunday he will square off against his great rival, Peyton Manning. “We are going to have to be at our best,” said Brady when asked what it would take to win that match-up. Both he and his Patriots team-mates looked pretty close to it this weekend. PB

Big Ben has more than a big day in win over Indianapolis

On Sunday, the NFL woke up to Wembley, but that historical breakthrough clearly wasn’t going to cut it, as four quarterbacks threw for 400 yards or more on the same day for the first time ever. But of all the surreal performances on this defenceless day, no one produced bigger than the big man himself, Ben Roethlisberger.

In one of the strangest successful seasons Pittsburgh has witnessed in recent memory, Big Ben followed up losses to the Buccaneers and Browns this month with a hard-to-believe display in which he threw for a franchise record six touchdowns and 522 yards passing. Adding to the near-perfection, he wasn’t sacked, he didn’t throw an interception, and he completed a gaudy 40-of-49 passes on a day that surpassed every quarterback performance since the Steelers were born in 1933.

Riding a five-game win streak, the visiting Indianapolis Colts are no pushover and the numbers proved it with both teams combining for 922 yards in the Steelers’ 51-34 victory. Certainly igniting the competitive juices of Roethlisberger was the constant chatter surrounding Andrew Luck before this encounter with the young starlet and former No1 pick shouldering the headlines away from his contemporary during the build-up. Despite two rings to Roethlisberger’s name, the 32-year-old has never quite been in the conversation for greatest current players at the position.

But for lack of energy in writing out his lengthy surname, it’s hard to lock in on a reason for this. The towering yet mobile play-caller joined Tom Brady, Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw as the only NFL quarterbacks to win 100 games in 150 or fewer starts.

Pittsburgh have combined impressive displays with dampening mediocrity in 2014 and at the halfway stage they are 5-3, joining Baltimore and Cincinnati at two over .500 in the AFC North. They face the Ravens at Heinz Field this weekend and after the dreaded transitional years, Big Ben is finally in tune with his receiving corps. Leading the way is Antonio Brown – on pace to amass 1,700 yards and 14 touchdowns this season – followed by Markus Wheaton and Martavis Bryant.

That trio were all selected in the middle-to-late rounds and they’re led by a first-rounder who has never assumed the entitlement he more than exceeded against Indy. Roethlisberger admits he isn’t a numbers guy, with wins and rings the only statistics he cares about, but that doesn’t mean we can’t embrace what was a fabulous performance. MW

London witnesses stunning Lions comeback

Sitting at Wembley stadium on Sunday ahead of the earliest kick-off in NFL history (9.30 in the morning on the east coast), you got the feeling the majority of the crowd were attempting to adapt to their surroundings. Not because there was an American football game in London – the 10th International Series game had a homely feel to it – but because it was lunchtime and fans were on the cusp of witnessing a live game hours before their usual 6pm home comfort. It was unfamiliar territory but a special feeling for a city that feels it is now the NFL’s official 33rd market.

The Falcons received great support for their “home” game with “Rise Up” banners, Atlanta red emblazoned all over the stadium and a play-by-play announcer who never seemed to tire of screaming ‘iiiiiiiiit’s third down’, even when on one drive in the second half it was only second down Detroit.

Unfortunately for Mike Smith, who will be clinging on to his job at the end of the season unless his team can somehow turn around a 2-6 start, his team conceded 22 unanswered second-half points, blowing a 21-0 half-time lead which is tied for the biggest collapse in team history. Matt Prater kicked the winning three points as time expired, converting Detroit’s first field goal between 40 and 50 yards all season after seven straight misses between three different kickers.

Golden Tate – seven receptions for 151 yards and a touchdown on this day – has stepped up sublimely in Calvin Johnson’s absence and during his second straight game surpassing the 150-yard mark was on the receiving end of Matt Stafford’s 119th career touchdown pass, which put the quarterback ahead of Hall of Famer Bobby Layne for the Lions record. Stafford concluded on 120 scores after throwing for 325 yards and two touchdowns, leaving Detroit at 6-2 and in sole possession of the NFC North following Green Bay’s loss.

Fox Sports broadcast the game nationally back in the States while Sky Sports and Channel 4 did the same in the UK. If football for breakfast was munched down as graciously as pancakes and syrup in a roadside diner back where the NFL is viewed the most, there is no doubt the Lions’ comeback victory over the reeling Falcons was the christening to a fourth-window game for 2015 and beyond. MW

Quick outs

• Did the Saints just put the league on notice? A 44-23 win over the Green Bay Packers reminded us of the abundant talent in this team, and while the Saints’ record is still just 3-4, that is enough place them just a hair out of first place in an underachieving division. All four teams in the NFC South currently hold a losing record – placing it in stark contrast to the AFC North, where all four teams have winning records.

• Just when you think you’re getting a handle on where things stand this season, a Colt McCoy-led Washington team goes and beats the Cowboys on Monday Night Football. Dallas were, of course, shorn of their starting quarterback for much of the second-half, as Tony Romo left the game with a back injury (only to return late in the fourth quarter) but his team was struggling before he went down, and 10 of the Cowboys’ 17 points were scored with his replacement, Brandon Weeden, under centre. Is this the first herald of yet another Dallas collapse, or just another reminder of the old “any given Sunday” dictum? The Cowboys certainly won’t have things easy when they travel to Arizona in week nine.

• The Seahawks scraped past Carolina, but with speculation swirling around the long-term future of Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson being forced to answer bizarre questions about whether his team-mates consider him to be “black enough”, the sense that all is not quite right in the Seattle locker room continues to linger. That said, they have a chance to build some momentum now with back-to-back home games coming up, and the first of those against the winless Oakland Raiders.

• Percy Harvin did not solve the New York Jets’ problems. Which is not all that surprising, since a young Joe Namath would probably not be enough to solve the Jets’ problems right now. But it looks as though Rex Ryan will finally pull the plug on the Geno Smith era this week, turning the offence over to Michael Vick for the foreseeable future.

• Note to the Jets. You run that ridiculous “player lying down in the end zone” trick play like this, not like this.

• Note to Sammy Watkins. Score first, celebrate later.

• Note to everyone. This shaving NFL players into the back of your head lark needs to end. PB