The Arizona Cardinals surrendered a 19-6 lead, losing to the Minnesota Vikings 23-22. It was a game they had to have, and they now fall to 6-6 and trail the Seattle Seahawks by a game and a half for the NFC West.

This is the type of loss that has a rebounding effect on a team. The ability to bounce back from a poor showing in Seattle last week would have spoken volumes in a positive direction.

Unfortunately, this game spoke volumes in the wrong direction.

Here are the instant takeaways from a devastating loss:

The Cardinals have shown their fair share of surprising proficiency in 2024. Winning four in a row and sitting atop a weak division maybe oversold their ability to make the playoffs this soon.

I’ve written before that this team isn’t “ahead of schedule,” but rather right on schedule. They aren’t ready for a playoff berth just yet. Granted, the Vikings are a good squad, but you cannot choke a lead of that magnitude and be taken seriously.

There’s plenty of talent to be added and development to be done with young players, but if this team can’t win games like Sunday’s, they can’t win in January. Their division-winning could be all but gone, and their overall playoff hopes are in serious trouble, with another extremely bad matchup with the Seahawks coming to Phoenix next week.

It’s never on one guy, or even one coach, but head coach Jonathan Gannon needs to find a balance between his over-aggression in 2023, and the playing-to-lose that occurred on Sunday.

Five field goal attempts, punting on fourth and short, not going for a touchdown to seal the game late, and ignoring a potential two-point conversion to go up 14 were conservative decisions that didn’t pan out.

It’s easy to scrutinize each one in a vacuum and overreact to them – plenty more went wrong than these, but those decisions don’t win you big games against good opponents. The Cardinals need to be playing with more urgency, and that extends to Gannon.

Finding the proper balance between smart and reckless is the key to game management with an up-and-coming team.

Again, it’s easy to criticize Drew Petzing, but it’s not all on him. There were plenty of terrible mistakes in the form of penalties, sloppy play by the offensive line at times, and poor decisions and throws by Murray.

But as the Cardinals came up to run a desperation drive, I thought to myself “this team has no explosive ability.”

That’s fine, when you’re able to pound the rock and maintain a lead, or when you’re playing inferior teams. But when you’re facing a two-minute drill, there’s rarely a play designed for quick chunk yardage, and outside of the occasional flashes from Marvin Harrison Jr., there’s no big play or deep ball threat from most of the offense.

You can’t necessarily live and die by the vertical, but the lack of explosiveness keeps the entire defense right in Murray’s face. Even when he escapes the pocket, there’s not much open field to survey.

The broadcast also talked at length about getting the job done on first and second down, and staying out of third down. Arizona’s offense isn’t nearly reliable enough to make a living on third down.

It’s not that they need to be converting on first down, but far too many plays on early downs went for losses, or penalties, or barely a yard or two. Couple that with the fact that no one is worried about a throw deeper than 10 yards downfield, and the Cardinals’ offense simply isn’t a threat to teams who are fundamentally sound.

Feeding Trey McBride and James Conner is a great way to control the time of possession, but in this league, against the better teams, you need explosiveness, and you need to keep the defense honest. Arizona hasn’t been able to do that outside of their blowout of the Rams, and in smaller part the Jets.