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Blaine Gabbert plays well, but Arizona Cardinals fall to Houston Texans 31-21

The Arizona Cardinals young quarterback played good enough, but the team struggled around him.

NFL: Arizona Cardinals at Houston Texans Shanna Lockwood-USA TODAY Sports

The Arizona Cardinals were in desperate need of a good game from Blaine Gabbert and they got it.

However, they didn’t get much from anyone else.

While Gabbert’s final stat line looks bad: 21/33 257 yards 3 touchdowns 2 interceptions, he played well enough to keep the Cardinals in a position to win the game, but the defense made Tom Savage look like a good NFL quarterback and couldn’t stop the run without Corey Peters in the middle.

It all added up to an embarrassing loss to the Houston Texans 31-21.

Savage was 22/32 for 230 yards and two touchdowns and one interception. The Texans ran for 134 yards and two touchdowns and DeAndre Hopkins won his matchup with Patrick Peterson, finishing with four catches for 76 yards and a touchdown.

Adrian Peterson ran the ball 14 times for 26 yards and the Cardinals had four drops on the day that really hampered the overall performance on offense.

In the turning point of the game, with 6 minutes left in the game, Bruce Arians went for it on 4-1 and Peterson was stuffed and the Texans scored a touchdown on the next play.

Late in the game, trying to make something happen, Gabbert threw his two worst passes of the day, that both resulted in interceptions.

However, it was much ado about nothing with the interceptions, as it was Gabbert trying to make a play after being let down a number of times in the game. Gabbert pressed and made mistakes, but you live with it.

Budda Baker was phenomenal today on defense, but he was one of the few who was doing well on defense today.

In the end, the Cardinals fall to 4-6 on the season and there are more questions than answers for this team moving forward.

One thing you can take away from this game, you cannot place the blame on Blaine Gabbert for the loss.