Dan Bickley

azcentral sports

MINNEAPOLIS – Hope has expired. Belief is on a respirator. The Cardinals are not a good team playing poorly. They are a losing team playing to their deficiencies.

The truth can no longer be ignored.

Familiar refrains followed a 30-24 defeat to the Vikings on Sunday, from officiating mistakes to the surplus of time left on the schedule. With each passing defeat, the reactions sound like alibis, the stuff that must be said to keep an underachieving team from internal collapse.

Alas, winners don’t need explanations. Good teams possess heart, will and collective intent that is on display everywhere they go, every time they take the field. But there is nothing about this group that leads anyone to believe such a turnaround is possible, a team that has won four times in 10 games.

“When are we going to wake up?” linebacker Kevin Minter said. “When are we going to finally do what we know we can do?”

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This is how bad it’s become:

Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians began his postgame press conference by declaring no comments about the officiating. Meanwhile, his son sent a vulgar response directly to the NFL’s official Twitter account.

Quarterback Carson Palmer, whose arm strength looked better than it has all season, who took the brunt of lazy criticism on social media, was beyond despondent. The locker room sounded like a church in session, minus the faith. And then there was the embarrassing scene around rookie Robert Nkemdiche, who was scolded by Arians for his postgame clothing selection.

Cardinals players are allowed to travel in casual attire after victories. Losses require jackets and ties. Nkemdiche apparently had no clue, and scrambled to get out of his leather jacket and up to code. He asked a teammate to tie his tie, which he dropped over a T-shirt. Eventually, someone lent him a dress shirt, avoiding any future confrontation with the head coach.

The wardrobe malfunction seems meaningless, but says everything about a team sabotaged by a terrible rookie class, a lack of focus and the sum of its worst parts.

“It’s hard to win, period, in the National Football League,” Cardinals star Larry Fitzgerald said. “It’s damn hard. These guys, every single week, prepare just like we prepare. You have to go out there and earn victories in the National Football League. No one is going to lay out for you. You have to be able to make it happen. Unfortunately, we haven’t done that enough this year.”

BOX SCORE: Vikings 30, Cardinals 24

Stripped of importance, the game was highly entertaining. The Cardinals were dominant at times, offensively and defensively. They were resilient and infuriating, surrendering a pair of touchdown plays that totaled 100 or more yards. A pick-six near the end of the first half represented a 14-point swing, and was painfully reminiscent of what transpired between Kurt Warner and James Harrison in the Super Bowl.

“It looked like an obvious holding penalty,” Palmer said. “Smokey (John Brown) is trying to run an out route and it looked like he could not get out of the grasp of the defender. I am sure we will turn that into the league and I am sure they will come back and say it was holding.”

Unfortunately for the Cardinals, the exasperation of Valley fans is now directed at them, and not just NFL officials. Brown and J.J. Nelson aren’t NFL-tough and don’t make big plays. The infatuation with punter Drew Butler, which prompted the team to waive one of its draft picks earlier in the season, is absurd and unfounded. And special teams coach Amos Jones might be having the worst season of anyone outside Nkemdiche.

Jones is a long-time friend of Arians, and received strong support on Sunday. When asked if the special teams are being coached well enough, Arians wouldn’t budge.

“Extremely, extremely well,” he said.

Nobody is buying that one anymore. And with all due respect to James Bettcher, I’m re-hiring Todd Bowles as defensive coordinator the moment he gets fired by the New York Jets.

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There were many other moments that speak of a winning program that’s lost its way. Resting David Johnson is a smart strategy, but not at the goal line near the end of the first half in a crucial game. Allowing Brown to botch the biggest punt of the day is unforgivable, even if he had just cracked an explosive return, even if the obvious candidate for the moment (Patrick Peterson) lobbied for his teammate to get another chance.

“It was just a stupid play by me not going for the ball,” Brown said.

The offensive line was even more depressing. After a false-start penalty on the first play of the game, the patchwork unit held its own against a stout Vikings front, allowing the Cardinals to rack up 135 rushing yards. But at the end, when the team had two chances to prevail with a game-winning touchdown, Palmer had nowhere to go and no time to throw.

That’s what a losing team looks like. No matter how much they insist otherwise.

“It’s tough for me to pinpoint what it is,” Peterson said. “The leadership in this locker room and the Arizona Cardinals community, we have to rally the troops around us. And five-star players have to be five-star players the rest of the season.”

After all, there’s plenty of time left. Except with this team, that’s becoming more threat than promise.

Reach Bickley at dan.bickley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8253. Follow him at twitter.com/danbickley. Listen to “Bickley and Marotta,” weekdays from 12-2 p.m. on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM.