Cardinals

Arizona Cardinals trade OT Levi Brown to the Pittsburgh Steelers

stevenlourie Cardinals, Steelers, Uncategorized

Trade for Steelers: The Steelers clearly need left tackle help. 2012 2nd round pick Mike Adams is bombing in his first chance as a full-time starter. Only Atlanta’s tackles, Sam Baker and Lamar Holmes, have graded out worse than Adams on ProFootballFocus this season. However, Brown isn’t a significant upgrade. He currently ranks just 10 spots higher than Adams, 60th out of 72, and the 2007 5th overall pick has never resembled an NFL caliber left tackle.

Before missing the entirety of the 2012 season with injury, Brown was ProFootballFocus’ 57th ranked offensive tackle (out of 76) in 2011, 78th ranked offensive tackles (out of 78) in 2010, and 72nd ranked offensive tackle (out of 77) in 2009. He’s also very overpaid, making 4.75 million this season and 6 million in an age 30 season in 2014, though I suppose the Steelers could cut him without penalty after the season. Still, the last thing the Steelers need is another overpaid veteran. Though they’re only 2 games out of the AFC North lead, at 0-4, they are in no position to be making this type of move.

Grade: C

Trade for Cardinals: I thought the Cardinals should have cut Brown before the season because he simply wasn’t worth his salary so getting anything for him is a win, even a late round pick as the Cardinals will reportedly receive. The Cardinals are technically still in it at 2-2, but I doubt they’ll miss Brown that much. Intriguing youngsters Bradley Sowell, Nate Potter, and Bobbie Massie all have more upside than him at a cheaper rate. Sowell will get the first crack at the left tackle job with Brown gone and it’s going to be hard for him to be much worse than Brown.

Grade: A

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Carolina Panthers at Arizona Cardinals: 2013 Week 5 NFL Pick

stevenlourie 2013 NFL Picks, 2013 Week 5 NFL Picks, Cardinals, Panthers, Uncategorized

Carolina Panthers (1-2) at Arizona Cardinals (2-2)

Carolina was one of my biggest, if not my biggest sleeper coming into the season. I had them winning 12 games and the NFC South. They finished last season playing very good defense, allowing 21.2 points per game in the final 12 games of last season after they moved Luke Kuechly to the middle linebacker, despite facing top-16 offenses in 8 of those 12 games. They looked poised to continue that into 2013, after adding Star Lotulelei and Kawaan Short in the 1st and 2nd round pick of the draft. Offensively, they finished last season scoring 26.0 points per game after Cam Newton put a slow start to his sophomore year behind him. That wasn’t anything ridiculous for them because they scored 25.4 points per game in 2011. In Newton’s 3rd year in the league, he looked poised to have the best year of his career.

In the first 2 games of the season, that looked pretty wrong. The defense was excellent, possibly even better than expected as Star Lotulelei looked like a legitimate Defensive Rookie of the Year candidate. However, their offense was bogged down by poor game plans put together by Offensive Coordinator Mike Shula, who was promoted from quarterbacks coach after Rob Chudzinski left for Cleveland. They also struggled to close games later, something that had plagued them since 2011, Head Coach Ron Rivera’s 1st season with the team. That pushed them to 2-14 in games decided by a touchdown or less under Rivera. That’s something that usually evens out in the long run, but it was fair to wonder if the Panthers would ever be able to close out games well under Ron Rivera.

Week 3, however, they destroyed the Giants 38-0 and looked like the team I expected them to be before the season. Yes, the Giants aren’t very good, but beating a team by 38 points, no matter who they are, is an incredibly impressive accomplishment. In that game, their offensive game plan was much better, utilizing more zone runs and shots downfield, which is how you best utilize Cam Newton.

Ron Rivera actually was less conservative with his decision making, as well. They didn’t have to close things out and that could still be a weakness, but I feel a lot better around them going forward and their ability to blow out opponents. They are moving the ball very well, converting 1st and 10 for a subsequent set of downs 79% of the time, while allowing opponents to do so just 72% of the time, a +7% differential they is actually 7th in the NFL.

They also benefitted from having a bye last week. Road favorites, like the Panthers are here, tend to dominate off of a bye. Teams are 44-17 ATS in this situation since 2002. It makes sene. Good teams tend to be very focused off of a bye and this allows them to play up to their talent level. The bye should be very good for the Panthers for that reason. They certainly have the talent to be favored here in Arizona and could easily blow them out. I’m very confident they cover a very short line here.

Carolina Panthers 27 Arizona Cardinals 16

Pick against spread: Carolina -1.5

Confidence: Pick of the Week

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Arizona Cardinals at Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 2013 Week 4 NFL Pick

stevenlourie 2013 NFL Picks, 2013 Week 4 NFL Picks, Buccaneers, Cardinals, Uncategorized

Arizona Cardinals (1-2) at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-3)

The Buccaneers have made the switch, going from Josh Freeman to Mike Glennon for the 4th game of their season, after going 0-3 in their first 3. In his last 8 games, he had completed 174 of 356 (48.8%) for 2210 yards (6.2 YPA), 8 touchdowns, and 12 touchdowns, winning just one of those games. Mike Glennon probably can’t be worse, but I don’t think he’ll be much better. There was a reason he fell to the 3rd round of a poor quarterback draft, even with so many teams needing quarterbacks this year. He has a lot of flaws and while he could someday be a capable NFL quarterback, he’s definitely not ready to be an NFL starter right now.

It hurts him even more than his top two receivers (and really his only two good receivers) Mike Williams and Vincent Jackson are hurt. Both are expected to play, but they will both be limited and their injuries didn’t give them a chance to establish any sort of chemistry with their new quarterback during the week. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Glennon completed than 50% of his passes in this one. The Buccaneers have a good supporting cast, but they’re going to have a hard time winning games if they can’t move the ball through the air.

This spread suggests these two teams are even and I don’t think that’s true. The Cardinals had a close road loss in St. Louis and a close home win against the Lions in the first 2 weeks of the season and looked like a decent football team. Last week strayed from that narrative as they lost 31-7 in New Orleans, but there are two excuses. One, the Saints are a very good football team. Two, they were probably distracted after teammate Dan Williams’ father was killed in a car accident en route to the game.

Williams won’t play in this one as he attends the funeral, but we’ll probably see a much less distracted and much more inspired performance from the Cardinals this week. Also, as a result as losing last week, the Cardinals are in a good spot here as road dogs off of a road loss. Teams are 89-54 ATS in that spot since 2008 and cover at about a 65% rate historically no matter what year you use as a cutoff for your sample size. I like the Cardinals’ chances of covering and winning in this one.

Arizona Cardinals 17 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 13 Upset Pick +115

Pick against spread: Arizona +2.5

Confidence: Medium

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Arizona Cardinals: 2013 Week 4 NFL Power Rankings (#21)

stevenlourie 2013 NFL Power Rankings, 2013 Week 4 NFL Power Rankings, Cardinals, Uncategorized

Last week: 23 (+2)

The offense is significantly improved this season, but the defense is now the problem and it’s not going to get better as they’ve lost 3 of their top-4 rush linebackers for the season with injury in the past week. Sam Acho, Lorenzo Alexander, and Alex Okafor, a 4th round rookie in line for a bigger role, are all out and they are left with John Abraham, who is showing his age, Matt Shaughnessy, and Dontay Moch, the latter of whom was recently signed off the street. Fortunately, they get talented middle linebacker Daryl Washington back from injury after one more game and we’ll see if he can play as well as he did in 2012, before the suspension.

Week 3 Studs

C Lyle Sendlein

LE Darnell Dockett

Week 3 Duds

LT Levi Brown

ROLB John Abraham

MLB Jasper Brinkley

SS Yeremiah Bell

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Arizona Cardinals at New Orleans Saints: 2013 Week 3 NFL Pick

stevenlourie 2013 NFL Picks, 2013 Week 3 NFL Picks, Cardinals, Saints, Uncategorized

Arizona Cardinals (1-1) at New Orleans Saints (2-0)

The way young players have stepped up on what was previously a horrible defense has to be very exciting for Saints fans. Cameron Jordan, back at his collegiate position for 5-technique end, is playing like one of the best in the game, while Junior Galette, Akiem Hicks, and rookie John Jenkins are also playing well. The offense is going to score points. There’s no concern there. But if they can stop teams at even an average rate, they’re going to be tough to beat. Almost every year a team goes from out of the playoffs to a first round bye. The Saints are the obvious front runner to do so right now.

The Saints didn’t move the ball that well last week because they played outdoors and in the rain, but back at home, inside, with no weather element, Drew Brees should be as deadly as he usually is. I really hate to bet against the Saints in the Superdome, where they’ve won 10 straight, both straight up and against the spread, under Sean Payton. However, I’m not that confident in the Saints -7.5 because the Cardinals are a team that I think will be competitive this season and one that can definitely mount a backdoor cover with all of their talented wide receivers and a great garbage time quarterback in Carson Palmer.

New Orleans Saints 30 Arizona Cardinals 20

Pick against spread: New Orleans -7.5

Confidence: None

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Arizona Cardinals: 2013 Week 3 NFL Power Rankings (#23)

stevenlourie 2013 NFL Power Rankings, 2013 Week 3 NFL Power Rankings, Cardinals, Uncategorized

Last week: 23

The Cardinals showed last week, and week 1 for that matter, that they’re going to be a competitive team in a very tough NFC. Their defense hasn’t been nearly as good as it was last year, thanks to losses in the secondary and the suspension of Daryl Washington, but Washington will be back in 2 weeks. Offensively, they still aren’t pass blocking well, but Carson Palmer has been a perfect fit in Bruce Arians’ system, especially with 3 talented receivers downfield.

Week 2 Studs

RB Andre Ellington

Week 2 Duds

RG Paul Fanaika

TE Jim Dray

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Detroit Lions at Arizona Cardinals: 2013 Week 2 NFL Pick

stevenlourie 2013 NFL Picks, 2013 Week 2 NFL Picks, Cardinals, Lions, Uncategorized

Detroit Lions (1-0) at Arizona Cardinals (0-1)

The Lions won just 4 games last year despite outgaining opponents by the 2nd most yardage in the NFL, by over 1000 yards. This is largely because they surrendered a ridiculous 70 points on return touchdowns, without scoring once in that fashion. If you take that out of the equation, the Lions would have outscored their opponents on the season (they also were terrible in close games, something that should turn around in 2013). That alone should get them to 8 wins.

That return touchdown margin should even out for 2 reasons. The first is that their special teams, which were responsible for 4 of those return touchdowns allowed, should improve. That type of thing is inconsistent on a year to year basis largely because special teams personnel is inconsistent on a year-to-year basis. The Lions have changed their punter, kicker, and both of their return men. The rest of their special teams personnel should look largely different as well. I’m not worried about their special teams being as bad as they were last season and that won’t just help eliminate that 10 touchdown gap, but it’ll help give them better field position.

The second reason is that I think they’re unlikely to allow 6 return touchdowns on 33 turnovers again, a ridiculous 18.2% rate. Ordinarily, teams who turn the ball over 33 times allow an average of 2 return touchdowns off of them over the course of the season. They’re probably score at least once or twice on return touchdowns this season, something they didn’t do last season. Add in the fact that the Lions suffered the 9th most injuries in the NFL last season and recovered the 2nd lowest percentage of fumbles recovered on the ground and this is a team that will be much closer to the 10 wins they had in 2011 than the 4 wins they had in 2012.

They certainly looked the part week 1 against the Vikings, but now they are road favorites in Arizona, who I think is an underrated team. They’re an equal caliber team to St. Louis, who they played tight in a field goal loss last week. Carson Palmer is infinitely better than the John Skelton/Ryan Lindley/Brian Hoyer combination that played the last 10 games of last season, going 1-9 and throwing 18 interceptions to 3 touchdowns in the process. He has 3 talented receivers to throw to in Larry Fitzgerald, Michel Floyd, and Andre Roberts and Head Coach Bruce Arians’ system fits their personnel perfectly. Their defense remains a solid unit. They won’t be a pushover for the Lions. However, the Lions should be the right side.

Detroit Lions 27 Arizona Cardinals 20

Pick against spread: Detroit -1.5

Confidence: Low

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Arizona Cardinals: 2013 Week 2 NFL Power Rankings (#23)

stevenlourie 2013 NFL Power Rankings, 2013 Week 2 NFL Power Rankings, Cardinals, Uncategorized

I predicted the Rams would beat the Cardinals by a field goal and that’s exactly what happened. Those two teams might be the most evenly matched in the NFL and I’m confident if they were to play again, this time in Arizona, Arizona would win by a field goal. I expect both teams to finish with the same record. The Cardinals’ passing offense looks infinitely improved over last season, with Carson Palmer throwing to 3 talented wide receivers, and they would be a playoff contender in the weaker AFC, but their inability to pass protect and run the football will hurt them in the loaded NFC.

Week 1 Studs

QB Carson Palmer

WR Larry Fitzgerald

WR Andre Roberts

RE Matt Shaughnessy

Week 2 Duds

LT Levi Brown

RT Eric Winston

RG Paul Fanaika

LE Darnell Dockett

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Arizona Cardinals at St. Louis Rams: 2013 Week 1 NFL Pick

stevenlourie 2013 Week 1 NFL Picks, Cardinals, Rams, Uncategorized

Arizona Cardinals (0-0) at St. Louis Cardinals (0-0)

The line used to be -6 in favor of St. Louis, but, unfortunately, it’s dropped down to -4.5. I would have taken Arizona +6, but I’m not as confident in Arizona +4.5. That being said, I think these two teams are much more evenly matched than they’re given credit for. Everyone assumes the Rams will improve their win total this season because they have more talent, but I’m not so sure about that.

Football is a game of parity. A team sees an average change of 3 wins per season in either direction and teams that have big improvements on average regress about half of that the following season and vice versa. The Rams have been doing quite a bit of bouncing around in the past few years, going from 1 win to 7 wins to 2 wins to 7 wins and a tie. Unfortunately, they haven’t been able to bounce into the playoffs at any point and if history is any indication, they are due to bounce back down, at least a little bit.

There were a couple unsustainable things that led to the Rams’ win improvement last season. They were 6th in the league in adjusted games lost, meaning they had significantly fewer injuries than the league average. This was a season after they ranked dead last in that category in 2011. They also exceeded their Pythagorean Expectations by a whole win (assuming a half win for the tie) as they were outscored by 49 points on the season and had a Pythagorean Expectation of 6.5 wins, 23rd in the NFL. They did have a really tough schedule last season, but things don’t look much easier this season.

The Rams will have to hope that all of the talent they’ve added through free agency in the past few off-seasons have paid off and that they will continue climbing the wins ladder because they are legitimately a more talented team. They’ve signed Harvey Dahl, Cortland Finnegan, Scott Wells, Kendall Langford, Jake Long, and Jared Cook to significant contracts in the last 3 off-seasons, to go with Robert Quinn, Michael Brockers, Alec Ogletree, and Tavon Austin added in the first round of the last 3 drafts. Austin, Long, and Cook are the big additions of this off-season as the Rams made surrounding Sam Bradford with more talent the single primary concern of their off-season.

The Rams are undoubtedly a more talented team this season, but they would have probably seen another bounce down (at least a few games) this season if they hadn’t added the extra talent. I just have a hard time seeing them improve on last year’s record in the loaded NFC. They have talent, but they’re not a great team or anything and you look at the rest of the NFC, I don’t know if there’s a single NFC team that you can say, they’re definitely worse than the Rams.

That includes the Cardinals. Remember, they were 4-0 to start last year and Kevin Kolb, their only competent quarterback, was 4-2 with this team. Carson Palmer isn’t great or anything, but he’ll look like Joe Montana compared to the Ryan Lindley/John Skelton/Brian Hoyer combination that combined to throw 3 touchdowns to 18 interceptions. They only game they won involved numerous big special teams plays and return touchdowns. If you had played another 16 games after the end of last season, the Cardinals would have been lucky to win 2 of them.

New Head Coach Bruce Arians put Carson Palmer in a position to throw downfield to an underrated trio of receivers in Larry Fitzgerald, Michael Floyd, and Andre Roberts. Their failure to drastically improve the offensive line, especially with 1st round pick Jonathan Cooper out for the season, as well as some losses defensively, including Daryl Washington for the first 4 games of the season with suspension, will hold them back from being as good as they looked at the start of last season, but they’ll be an improved team this year. I see a field goal game here, but I’m not confident enough to put anything on the Cardinals.

Also, one note, I’m changing how I do picks this year. I’ll be grouping my picks into high confidence, medium confidence, low confidence, and no confidence picks. I’ll also have one pick of the week.

St. Louis Rams 16 Arizona Cardinals 13

Pick against spread: Arizona +4.5

Confidence: None

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Arizona Cardinals sign OLB John Abraham and OT Eric Winston

stevenlourie Cardinals, Uncategorized

After the draft, I ranked the top-18 remaining free agents and John Abraham (#1) and Eric Winston (#3) were both very high on that list. The Cardinals snatched them up in one day and they both will help two very weak points on the Cardinals’ team, their pass rush and their offensive line. However, both of them are kind of odd fits. Abraham will have to move to outside linebacker in the Cardinals’ 3-4 for the first time in his career and the 6-4 269 pounder seems like an odd fit for the position, especially going into his age 35 season.

He’ll get opportunities to rush the passer from the defensive end position in sub packages though and he is still easily the best pass rusher on a team that was led in sacks last season by a middle linebacker who has since been suspended. After middle linebacker Daryl Washington and interior defensive lineman Calais Campbell, no player on their team had more than 4 sacks last season. Before Abraham, their rush linebacker stable consisted of Sam Acho, one of the worst pass rushers in the league last season, Lorenzo Alexander, a 30-year-old career backup, 4th round rookie Alex Okafor, and the injury prone O’Brien Schofield, a mediocre player who has since been waived upon the addition of Abraham.

Abraham is no longer capable of playing a full set of snaps because of his declining durability and mediocre run stopping skills. In an effort to keep him fresh, the Falcons played him on fewer than 70% of their snaps last season and his next team may have to go even lower than that as he ages. However, he can still have a major impact for a team, provided his skills haven’t fallen off a cliff in his age 35 off-season. Despite his limited snaps last year, he was still one of the league’s most productive pass rushers, totaling 10 sacks, 8 hits, and 36 hurries on 436 pass rush snaps, a 12.4% pass rush rate. He graded out as ProFootballFocus’ #5 end both overall and rushing the passer and he ranked 6th in pass rush efficiency.

Winston, meanwhile, is purely a right tackle, which is one of the only spots on their offensive line where they don’t have a real problem. Bobby Massie played great in the 2nd half of last season, allowing no sacks, 4 hits, and 7 hurries after allowing 13 sacks, 2 hits, and 35 hurries in the first 8 games of the season. The light really seemed to turn on for the 4th round rookie. Now he’ll have to move to right guard, where he has no experience. Winston, however, has graded out as ProFootballFocus’ 5th and 9th rated right tackle in the NFL in 2011 and 2012 respectively, doing so in two different schemes. Winston and Abraham came cheap (Abraham got 6 million over 2 years and Winston’s terms haven’t been disclosed) and while they’re odd fits, they’ll help this football team at a reasonable price.

Grade: A