When Chad Ryland crushed the 58-yard field goal in Carolina last week to tie the game on the final snap of regulation, the kicker looked like he barely had to give it effort.

"I felt in that situation I had 63 (yards) without having to overswing," Ryland said. "With the adrenaline of the game and everything it usually gives you a yard or two extra. That's part of growing as a kicker is that you don't have to do anything extra and get it from 61 or 62 and being able to trust your swing."

Kickers know their distance. They test themselves out on a chilly day in Carolina pre-game, and they have long made it part of their lives.

"That's always one of the fun things of the offseason, back it up and see who can swing," Ryland said. "That's what every kid in high school, what you grow up doing, go out to the field and back up as far as possible and try and hit 70-yard field goals as much as you can. That's naturally where the fun is for a lot of guys."

It's also fun for the Cardinals to see a young kicker emerge out of a troubling turn of events, which is what the Cards felt back in September when Matt Prater hurt his left (plant) leg and went on IR needing surgery. From that came Ryland.

Prater's practice window from IR has been open, but it seems unlikely at this point that he is restored to the roster this week or for the finale. The Cardinals currently don't have a roster spot, so someone would have to be released.

It probably wouldn't be Ryland, who signed a contract through 2025 when he joined the team. Prater is scheduled to be a free agent after the season; if the Cardinals chose to stick with Ryland as their kicker, no roster move would have to be made.

It's unfortunate for Prater, who was again off to a great start this season (10 of 10 on extra points and 6-for-6 on field goals, including a 57-yarder). But Ryland has been excellent, making 25-of-29 field goals and all 21 extra points. He did have a field-goal miss in three straight games, but he also made 11 in that same three-game span.

"I wouldn't characterize it as 'issues,'" special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers said when asked if Ryland had gotten past his "issues" from that time. "The kicks didn't go through in a couple of games, they have gone through a lot in other games. At the end of the days, you go back and look at a guy's season, you evaluate the whole body of work."

That evaluation is coming. Whatever the Cardinals do, Ryland has been good in Year 2 after a rocky rookie season in New England, and found a spot kicking in the NFL.

-- James Conner is questionable, but other than the sleeve he was wearing all week on his right leg for the knee injury he suffered against the Panthers, you couldn't tell (from the time we could watch) anything might be wrong with the running back. If I had to guess, I'd guess we will see Conner get a chance to add to his career-best 1,090 yards rushing (and career-best 1,500 yards from scrimmage.)

-- Yes, the Cardinals could shut Conner down. But any ideas of that about any player who doesn't have a serious injury has been met with a raised eyebrow this week.

"What it says about James is what it says about all of us," running backs coach Autry Denson said. "We sign up to play. Seventeen is the minimum amount of games. So if we're playing and they're keeping score, we're playing. That's just what it is. I don't think that's even a question. It's funny when someone even asks that. That's just what you do. We're wired to do that. You love playing football. So you do that as much as you can as many times as you can."

-- I wouldn't be surprised to see rookie Trey Benson play with his ankle issue either. We will see.

-- Speaking of running, we haven't had a chance to talk a lot about Kyler Murray running of late, but there he was in Carolina, rushing for 63 yards and a TD on eight tries and again looking so dangerous when that part of his game is in play. In 10 games he's had at least five rushing attempts, in those games he's gained 463 yards and scored 3 touchdowns with 7.6 yards per carry. In the five games with fewer, it's 55 and 2 with 5.0 yards a carry.

"I had more opportunities this past game to use my feet," Murray said. "I definitely would love to do that more, but I don't make the opportunities. If the opportunity presents itself, for sure."

-- Wide receivers coach Drew Terrell remains bullish on rookie wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. – why wouldn't he, to be honest – but Terrell did have an interesting comment when it came to Harrison and the whole wideout room when it comes to attacking defenses.

"I'm just keeping him focused on task, not that 'Oh you're supposed to have this number this year or you're supposed to be this guy,'" Terrell said. "Also, I'm staying on him consistently about dictating to the defense, which I think is important for receivers. At the end of the day, and this might sound dumb, their job is to defend us. You should be dictating every route to them. … Put some fear in (the defender's) heart."

It was interesting to see that the Panthers last week dedicated their top cornerback, Jaycee Horn, to tight end Trey McBride and not a wideout.

-- Harrison, meanwhile, has stood at his locker every week this season and listened to the critical questions when they have come up and answered the best he could. On Thursday, he was asked how he would assess his rookie year.

"I'm not gonna lie and say it's been easy," Harrison said. "To have more of a roller-coaster ride as a rookie, it's been hard. I've tried to focus on the approach rather than the results."

-- While the Rams offense was in shambles (injury-wise) the first time the Cardinals played them in Week 2, the defense wasn't. Most of the season in fact, the defense is what it is, with the Rams allowing 25.5 points a game and 366 yards a game through Week 14. The last two games, however, the Rams have buckled down, allowing just 7.5 points and 256 yards a game. (To be fair, those games were against the struggling 49ers and the Jets, so context does matter.) Murray and the Cardinals will need to find a way to turn the clock back against this defense at least a few times.

-- The Cardinals have not gotten a lot of takeaways this season – 14, with is tied for 24^th in the league, and it's led to only 29 points – although it remains a focal point of coach Jonathan Gannon with the whole team and defensive coordinator Nick Rallis in particular.

"You can either go with the mindset of nothing matters or everything matters," Gannon said. "What I mean by that, two drastic mindsets – (takeaways) just happen, or they don't. Yes, there is some of that in a game … I think there is an element of coaching in it. A lot of what goes into it is coached. The language, how you drill it, how you teach it, what you show them, what you point out to them. Then there is the element of in-game, are the opportunities there.

"Sometimes they happen, sometimes they don't, but they know it's a winning stat and I feel the better educated they are and the better they are coached at the different ways to take the ball away and when they come up you can uptick your opportunities. Whether they get them or not, you don't know that."

-- Yes, the Trey McBride TD catch watch remains active. McBride is up to 92 receptions this season without a scoring catch, tying Keyshawn Johnson, who had 92 catches in 2001 for the Buccaneers before snagging a scoring pass. Johnson's TD, in Week 12, was his 10^th and final one of the game and 93^rd of the season, the game-winning points in the Bucs' 15-12 win over the Lions. Whether McBride's first catch Saturday is a score seems unlikely, but the Cardinals wouldn't mind getting a game-winning score out of the event – assuming it does happen.

-- McBride, at 958 yards, is also closing in on his first 1,000-yard season and first 1,000-yard season for a Cardinals pass catcher since DeAndre Hopkins had 1,407 yards in 2020.

-- Cornerback Elijah Jones won't play in his rookie season. It was already a longshot despite the third-round pick getting his practice window opened to come off IR, but that window officially closed at three weeks on Thursday. It was not a surprise given that Jones apparently had some setback, posting on social media earlier this week his right ankle heavily wrapped with a pair of crutches next to it. Jones will remain on IR.

-- The last word comes from safety Budda Baker, after the defense got singed by the Panthers run game last week to the tune of 243 yards, the most allowed this season.

"I was surprised. I wouldn't have told you they would've run for more than 150. We understood what was at hand, we understood the run game, we understood all the things we didn't execute. … That's the name of the game. Just execute. We didn't execute at the level we are accustomed to. No explanation, no excuse, just didn't happen. Now we are on to a new week."

See you Saturday night in L.A.