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At one point during the 2021 regular season, the Arizona Cardinals were deemed by many as the clear-cut top team in the NFL.
The Cardinals opened up the campaign with a 7-0 record, as they picked up convincing road wins over teams such as the Tennessee Titans and the Los Angeles Rams. Arizona simply looked poised to orchestrate a deep playoff run, as Kyler Murray led its innovative offense and also as its defense continually delivered on crucial third downs.
The script later flipped for the Cardinals, as they wound up dropping four of their final five games in the season. In the end, they crashed out of the playoffs following a 23-point road loss to the eventual Super Bowl champions in the Rams.
Multiple Cardinals players came away from the late-season collapse with plenty of learning lessons, including defensive end J.J. Watt. From Watt’s perspective, he believes that injuries played quite a role in the Cardinals’ sluggish performances late in the year. Overall, he also sees that the team needs to do more to handle adversity better.
“I think the first thing is injuries,” Watt told Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer. “We have to stay healthy. We’re 7–0 and I go down, Kyler [Murray] goes down, Hop [DeAndre Hopkins] goes down for a bit. You start to lose some very important pieces to the team, that’s going to hurt you.
“Also from a leadership standpoint, just being able to handle that adversity, having different guys out there and being able to say, It’s all right, we got this. The handling of adversity and the maturity of the team, to be able to go through a difficult stretch of a game, or even if it’s a difficult week or two, to be able to handle that. … That’s something that definitely, as the leadership of this team, we’re working on.”
The Cardinals are set to have quite a challenge to mirror their 7-0 start from last year, especially as their opening three games in the 2022 campaign will come against teams that made the playoffs this past season, including the Kansas City Chiefs. At the least, a pivotal campaign sure awaits Watt and company.
