Cardinals shake off ugly loss to aim for playoffs

Food for thought for a possible playoff rematch against the No. 2-seed Cardinals, who hadn’t trailed by more than 10 points since the day after Halloween until Seattle showed up as a touchdown underdog Sunday.

The rest is just guesswork (and we’ve reached out to a network in hopes of turning this guess into fact) – but because CBS was stuck with the 1 p.m. ET Sunday slot last year while NBC got a primetime bonanza in Steelers-Ravens, you’d assume it was CBS’s turn to get those nighttime ratings, leaving NBC to take a still-excellent 1 p.m. Sunday slot and ESPN, being the new kid on the playoff block, getting left with a still-good Chiefs-Texans games at the odd 4:35 p.m. ET Saturday window, the same window they had last year, also with the least intriguing game.

“When we play with passion and energy, we don’t miss tackles”, he said. “For me, I am a competitor and I want to put us in the situation and be able to play through the pain. They’re going to have to take it from us”. The only wild card that is an underdog is slumping Green Bay, and by only a point at Washington. This didn’t happen in a 36-6 loss to the Seahawks.

Although Pittsburgh stumbled badly in Week 16 with its loss at the Ravens, it got another chance when the moment proved too big for the Jets in Buffalo. But Seattle’s second-ranked defense limited Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer to just 129 yards before he was pulled in the second half.

Still, the game itself was just watching a boring team on a boring Sunday when there was nothing to play for, and you could tell.

What this does is remove a lot of the positive vibes the franchise had built up over the past couple of months.

The Seahawks racked up 433 total yards of offense in the last meeting between the two teams.

More importantly, the blowout defeat also highlighted some specific problems that could haunt the Cardinals in the coming weeks. Then Lockett returned a second Drew Butler punt for 42 yards with 2:59 remaining to help set up another score – a 24-yard pass from Wilson to Jermaine Kearse.

According to Pro Football Focus, Mathieu was the No. 1 cornerback in football this season before he went down with a torn ACL.

-Richard Sherman makes sure the Cardinals know how he feels. But neither the offense nor the defense seemed to slow down without those players. When the defensive front couldn’t get to Wilson this week, the secondary suffered. More on this game after tonight’s results. Russell Wilson has proven to be one of the best QB in the National Football League of today. And with two of the five starting offensive linemen out with injury, running back Christine Michael still managed to rush for 102 yards on 17 carries. Wilson exquisitely placed the ball on the covered wide receiver’s hands, in stride, at the side boundary of the end zone late in the second quarter to make it 30-6.

Outside linebacker Dwight Freeney, who finished the regular season with a team-leading 8.0 sacks, was not fretting over the loss, either.

Here are some things to note from Seattle’s dominating victory.

The Minnesota Vikings and the Seattle Seahawks face off on Sunday at TCF Bank Stadium in a NFL NFC Wildcard Playoff game.

The Seahawks just absolutely restored all they had lost the previous week. On Sunday he looked subpar, as did the Cardinals, the sheepish NFC West champs. It was an all around, bad game.