Dan Bickley

azcentral sports

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. – Fire alarms went off in Arizona’s team hotel on Saturday night. A day later, distress signals were heard all over the Valley.

The Cardinals are not only losing football games. They look lost. They do not resemble a Super Bowl-caliber operation.

“We’ve dealt with adversity the past three years,” safety Tyrann Mathieu said. “But we haven’t gotten our butts whipped this bad to begin a season. We’ve lost guys to injury. We maybe lost a couple of games here and there. But we’ve never gotten demolished. And today we got whipped, man.”

Following a 33-18 loss to Buffalo – a game that was not nearly as close as the final score indicated – there were many reasons for concern. A vaunted offense has never looked worse. The defense just yielded 298 rushing yards, lacks physicality and specializes in missing tackles. The special teams are mostly atrocious.

BOX SCORE: Bills 33, Cardinals 18

Gifted with beautiful weather and a winless opponent, the Cardinals responded with one of their worst efforts since head coach Bruce Arians arrived in the desert. Mathieu kicked the ball out of bounds trying to scoop up a fumble he caused in the Bills’ backfield; Carson Palmer tossed four interceptions in the fourth quarter; and another botched snap from rookie long snapper Kam Canaday turned into a Buffalo touchdown.

The latter was something right out of the Dark Ages of Arizona football, the most tragically comical play since Max Hall sailed a pass to a wide-open member of Seattle’s secondary in Ken Whisenhunt’s final season.

“We’ve got enough talent on this team,” Mathieu said. “But we need more leadership.”

RELATED:Cardinals embarrassed in road loss to Bills

After the game, the losing locker room was a sad scene. Drew Butler reinjured his ankle on the first punt of the game, and waited at his locker to be fitted with a walking boot. Deone Bucannon was weeping in a towel and highly emotional. He declined to say if it was personal or performance-related. And Canaday struggled to deliver one-word answers, sounding like a kid who knew he just squandered his first job in the NFL.

Arians’ advice?

“Grow the hell up,” the Cardinals head coach said.

Mathieu and others refused to blame the coaching staff, pinning blame on the 53 men who took the field on Sunday. But this was an organization defeat from top to bottom. General Manager Steve Keim deserves to be held accountable for sticking with Canaday, who likely cost the team a victory over the Patriots and was labeled “erratic” by his head coach following a Week 2 victory. Same with Butler, who hasn’t exactly been a booming asset since joining the team in 2014.

Arians also deserves blame for struggling with the sequence of his play calling, for an offense that has yet to score in the first quarter. Too often, the Cardinals passing game has forced deep throws down the field, showing little patience for methodical marches. He admitted that teams are trying to take that element away from Arizona in 2016, but insisted the shots were still there on Sunday.

Still, Arians should be working the middle of the field, accepting what the defense gives him, making opponents defend shorter routes. Once that is accomplished, the chunk plays will return. The Cardinals finally did that in the latter stages of Sunday's game, but the strategy arrived far too late.

“Offensively, not having a first down in the first 20 minutes of the game, that’s not good,” wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald said. “Especially as potent as we are.”

Palmer is not blameless, either. He bounced a couple of passes to John Brown early in the game, underthrew at least one deep ball, and forced at least one of his fourth-quarter interceptions that ended any chance of a miraculous comeback.

But his costliest play might’ve been the delay-of-game penalty he incurred on 4th-and-1 from Buffalo 7, which led to a field goal attempt and Canaday’s awful snap. And in the end, he was trumped by beleaguered Bills coach Rex Ryan, who deployed a passing defense that featured seven defensive backs.

“Well, I played (against) Carson a few times, and unlike last week, I had a pretty decent track record against him,” Ryan said. “And it actually paid off this week, too.”

The larger issue is whether the Cardinals have gotten big-headed, a team that had won 34 regular-season games in the previous three seasons. Mathieu implied that might be the case.

“When you’re good at something, you think you can just show up and be good at it,” he said. “Like I said, we all have to look in the mirror, myself included. I’m not excused for that. We have to prepare better mentally (and) physically…

“Nobody is bigger than the game. You can have all the talent in the world but you can’t show up expecting to play at a high level. You have to prepare the right way mentally, get a good night’s sleep, you’ve got to eat the right food. It’s death by inches in the NFL.”

The Cardinals have lost four of their last six games dating back to last year, a statistic that is mitigated by the injury to Palmer’s right index finger near the end of the 2015 season. But Sunday’s game will turn up the heat on everyone, from the head coach to defensive coordinator to the guys who can’t block properly on kickoff returns. It’s a safe bet at least one person will lose his job.

After all, Sunday in Buffalo was not death by inches. It was defeat by humiliation. That is unacceptable if the Cardinals are really serious about winning a Super Bowl.

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.