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San Diego -- a big one point win on final drive.
New York -- a come from behind win.
San Francisco -- another down-early come back game.
Denver -- a big loss, but the game was closer than the score says. The wins vs. Washington and Oakland (teams we are suppose to beat) and Philly (team we weren't suppose to beat, damn east coast bias)
Currently the Cardinals are the 30th team in the NFL on total offense (15th points) and 15th in total defense (5th points). In fact, as far as I can tell, they lead the NFL in only one statistical category, the only damn one that matters the most, win percentage -- .857.
So what is the biggest difference between our 3-4 start last year to our 6-1 start this year? There is one huge, glaring difference between these two teams last year. Here is our stat line last year after seven games. We had thrown 13 interceptions gave up 20 sacks(nearly 3 per game) and were -2 on turnover ratio after seven games and the only reason it was that good is we forced a lot of turnovers.
Fast forward to this year. We have thrown exactly one interception, have only given up 11 sacks (1.5 per game) and have a turnover ratio of +9 (second int the NFL). For years we have heard that if you win the turnover battle you win 92 percent of the time (or something like that, its very high) and it would appear that they are correct. I guess the most ironic part of this whole thing is the Cardinals have gone against that stat now three times this year.... (2 in wins, and 1 in our loss).
So here we sit with our gauntlet schedule eight weeks deep and 9 more weeks to go. We have done everything we needed to do, We beat the teams we are suppose to beat, we beat quality teams in San Diego and Philly. We even played Denver tough that maybe if we weren't on our third string QB, it would have been closer. Keep an eye on those turnover stats though, because as long as we can keep them under control we will keep winning games.
On a side note, I made a prediction at the beginning of the year...(all the way at the bottom). It's still a long season, but not so stupid now is it?