Cardinals Leaning Into Their Bread and Butter

The Arizona Cardinals got back to basics.

Dec 15, 2024; Glendale, Arizona, USA; Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray (1) hands off the ball to running back James Conner (6) against the New England Patriots at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

ARIZONA -- In what was effectively must-win territory, the Arizona Cardinals returned to what they did best in Week 15: Running the football.

Out of the bye week, Arizona's rushing attack - as a whole - had been swamped by impressive fronts in the Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks, forcing the Cardinals to operate vastly different to how they'd like.

With their season on the line, the Cardinals found success on the ground with 163 yards - 110 coming from James Conner.

“I liked some of the explosives that were in the game, but I thought we started to lean on them a little bit and really controlled the line of scrimmage probably later in the game, honestly," said Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon.

Conner also poured in two of Arizona's three offensive touchdowns to put the Cardinals back in the win column. Arizona's now 7-7 on the season with three games left, very much still alive in the race for the NFC West.

With a lot of intricacies going into making a successful play work, Gannon says his guys simply won their one-on-one battles in the trenches, making execution easy.

"Guys executing at a high level, playing with good pad level. I thought some of the schemes by (Offensive Coordinator) Drew (Petzing) in what he called and some of the things that we practiced, we got to some different things—which I thought were excellent (with) how they were trying to play us a little bit differently. I think we got them in some good schemes," Gannon continued.

"They understood where the ball should go, how we needed to ID some things. At the end of the day, throw scheme out the window, a lot of guys winning in one-on-one, better pad level, better technique and violence was there, so it was good.”

Arizona's workhorse in Conner is closing in on the 1,000-yard rushing mark for a second straight year, needing just 27 yards against the Carolina Panthers' worst-ranked run defense on Sunday to hit the milestone.

With Emari Demercado on injured reserve and Trey Benson's status for Sunday currently unknown, the Cardinals may again need Conner to do some heavy lifting once again.

“You guys’ kind of know we have some different variety in the run game and he can really do it all," said Gannon on Conner.

"He can run wide zone, he can run inside zone, he can run gap schemes, and he can do it from gun, from under, from pistol. He's got a skillset that warrants (us) to be able to call those certain runs. All of the different ones. He doesn't do any of those bad. Then obviously his style of running. He's a premier player. He hits it, he's got good vision, he’s got good balance, he's hard to bring down, he's got juice. He's doing a good job."

We'll see if the Cardinals can carry momentum next Sunday, though their bread and butter finally fed them well last week.