The Cardinals dropped their second preseason game to the Indianapolis Colts 21-13. The key theme in this game was the sheer number of penalties committed by the team. Arizona was flagged for 11 accepted penalties for 82 yards, but also two more that were declined.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon praised the team’s effort in the game in his postgame presser but also accepted responsibility for those penalties. Gannon noted the team was physically ready to play, but not mentally ready.
“It’s too hard to win in this league and you can’t self-destruct, and we did in all three phases. So that falls on me and the coaches, so we got to get that cleaned up fast.”
One such frustrating sequence came in the second quarter. The Cardinals had just forced a turnover on defense and the offense had driven all the way down to the Colts’ 12-yard line. What happened next was three straight holding penalties on left tackle Christian Jones. One of those penalties was ticky-tack, coming on Trey Benson’s 20-yard scamper up the middle, but the three fouls costs Arizona 23 yards. They were able to gain 10 of those back and had to settle for a 40-yard field goal.
“It’s hard to win like that. It’s hard to get any type of rhythm going, get plays off, get in rhythm when you got the ball moving and you’re going backwards. We have to do better as a collective whole.”
Gannon later stressed the importance of teaching the players to play with the proper technique in order to avoid committing penalties. He notes that penalties come with proper decision-making and technique.
Moving forward, the Cardinals will need to clean up the penalties as they get ready for the start of the regular season on September 8 in Buffalo.
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Michael McDermott covers the Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Cardinals, and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on X via @MichaelMcDMLB
