Arizona Cardinals: 2011 Season Madden Roundup

The season is over for the Cardinals now, so lets take a look at how the stats for some of the Cardinals players ended up after simulating the season for the Cardinals over these last couple of months.

Some stats I saw wound up being pretty surprising to me as well. I thought that a couple of the guys would have done better than their final numbers wound up being, and one of the receivers had their final numbers wind up much higher than his did in real life.

7-9 (8-8 in real life)

Kolb played 10 games and had a 5-5 record, Skelton played six games and had a 2-4 record.

In real life Kolb played nine games and had a 3-6 record (one of those wins should go to Skelton, but Kolb started the game so the win is added to his record), Skelton played eight games and had a 5-2 record.

Passing:

Kevin Kolb: 155 of 291 (53.2%) for 2285 yards (7.8 YPA), 18 TD, 16 Int, 76.8 Rating

John Skelton: 92 of 203 (45.3%) for 1294 yards (6.3 YPA), 10 TDs, 13 Int, 56.1 Rating

In real life, Kolb was 146 of 253 (57.3%) for 1955 yards (7.7 YPA), 9 TD, 8 Int, and a rating of 81.1. Skelton was 151 of 275 (54.9%) for 1913 yards (7.0 YPA), 11 TD, 14 Int, and a rating of 68.9.

Rushing:

Beanie Wells: (15 games) 281 carries for 951 yards (3.3 YPC), Nine TDs

In real life Beanie ran 245 times for 1047 yards (4.3 YPC) and 10 TDs over 14 games.

Receiving:

Larry Fitzgerald: 68 catches for 955 yards, Seven TDs

Early Doucet: 34 catches for 518 yards, Seven TDs

Andre Roberts: 63 catches for 1013 yards, Nine TDs

In real life, Fitz had 80 catches for 1411 yards with eight TDs, Doucet had 54 catches for 689 and five TDs, Roberts had 51 catches for 586 yards and two TDs

Sacks/Interceptions:

Sacks: Darnell Dockett (3), Dan Williams (2), Paris Lenon, O'Brien Schofield, Daryl Washington (2), Nick Eason, Sam Acho (3), Clark Haggans, Joey Porter (2), Calais Campbell (3)

19 total

Interceptions: Patrick Peterson (4), Paris Lenon (3), Richard Marshall (2), Daryl Washington (4), A.J. Jefferson (3), Adrian Wilson (3), O'Brien Schofield, Kerry Rhodes

21 total

In real life, the Cards were much better with sacking the Quarterback than picking him off ending the year with 42 sacks and 10 interceptions.

Punt/Kick Return Touchdowns

Patrick Peterson: Punt (4)

LaRod Stephens-Howling: Kick (3)

In real life, Peterson scored four times, but LSH didn't get any.

Final Thoughts:

After all of this, the things that surprised me the most were the final numbers for Beanie and Roberts. I thought that Beanie would have had more yards than he wound up with in the end, and really who expected Roberts to have more receiving yards than Fitz at the end of this thing?

I did not keep an active tracker out there for all of the receivers either, I also had one game where Doucet wasn't tracked (probably because he didn't do anything in that game) and one where I gave Fitz a TD in a game he didn't score in.

In the end, the three main receivers wound up with 2486 yards and 23 TDs, the Quarterbacks combined for 3579 yards and 28 TDs.

The sack numbers were surprisingly low, but there were a few games where nobody wound up with a sack.

The final record wound up being very close to the actual record, but the games which were won and lost wound up being pretty different.