There are times, Drew Petzing said, when he's looking over a sequence of plays in a quarter or half and he can be surprised -- in hindsight -- of how the run/pass ratio might've broken down.
That wasn't true Sunday against the Lions, when the Cardinals offensive coordinator said he "definitely knew" how the fourth quarter went. Ultimately, the Cardinals ran 18 offensive plays, and Petzing called a pass every time. The Lions opened the quarter up 20-10, en route to a 20-13 Cardinals defeat.
"I definitely knew because I knew time on the clock when we went to the two-minute mindset," Petzing said. "Doesn't mean we're not going to run the ball in the two-minute mindset if we get the right look or different things come up during the drive, but I think it was something I was pretty aware of."
The Cardinals did try to spring a run back in Buffalo in Week 1, trying to run on the game's penultimate play while down six. Against the Lions, the running game had produced next to nothing. Petzing didn't address that point directly, but the Cardinals averaging 2.5 yards a carry when Kyler Murray wasn't the ballcarrier figures to have played into the decision-making. James Conner was held to 1.9 yards per carry on his nine tries.
In the final quarter, the Cardinals opened their first drive from their own 12 and moved out to their 48 before passes on third-and-6 and fourth-and-6 were both incomplete. On the next possession, starting on their own 9, the Cardinals ended up with three straight incompletions from their own 28 before punting. The final possession, one that ended in a field goal, the Cards started at their 7 and got all the way to the Detroit 26 after a third-down completion of 13 yards when they needed 17.
Coach Jonathan Gannon said Monday the Cardinals have to be able to win games with the pass if the run game isn't working, but the way the team is built, the difficulty meter goes way up when the ground game is stifled like it was against Detroit.
"The scheme could've been better from a coaching standpoint, the timing of some of the calls we'd like to have back," Petzing said. "There is definitely an execution piece to it. ... they got the better half of us on that part of the game."
