Positional Battles: Trenders and Fallers

Last night we saw a 2012 version of the Cardinals. Now whether this was nothing but a fluke or not is to be determined. Let's look at the positional battles that were still up for grabs as of last night and who stated their claims for it.

Trended Up:

Antoine Cason: "Wow this guy is crazier than usual". That could be, but Cason remained relatively quite on a day where the secondary was abused by Rivers and his backups. He showed up in run support and I can only remember the one play where the receiver went out of bounds that someone made a "catch" on him. He likely won't beat out Powers yet, but he had a quietly solid game.

Ryan Williams: Williams will make both the Bubble Player list and the Positional Battles list becauss he showed his worth on a few plays last night. Albeit this is a starting talent running back going against San Diego's 3's, but he played angry, made good cuts, and played smash mouth football.

Alfonso Smith: He's fighting two other guys for the backup job, Stepfan Taylor, and Ryan Williams. He stated his case as he was aware of the holes that were open and turned on the speed as he pounded through it. Solid plays abound for him.

Trending Down:

Tony Jefferson: After a really good game against the Cowboys, he struggled in this game giving up a monster play towards the end. I am not saying he will be amongst the first names cut, but his road to cracking the 53 man roster as a safety got longer.

Levi Brown: He's battling Nate Potter for the starting role, and while he still likely has it secured, he didn't help himself committing multiple infractions that were killers and struggled in Pass Protection against Dwight Freeney after handling Clay Matthews and Demarucs Ware the prior two weeks.

There is obviously a lot of work to do on both sides of the ball, and the Defense showed us the ugly after two good weeks, but there is two weeks (starting today) until the Cardinals season opener against the Rams.