Getty Arizona Cardinals offensive lineman D.J. Humphries (right) celebrates a touchdown with receiver DeAndre Hopkins against the Tennessee Titans on September 12 at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Arizona Cardinals’ Week 3 matchup with the Jacksonville Jaguars has all the makings of a trap game.
One team is unbeaten; the other is winless. One is an emerging contender led by a Pro Bowl quarterback; the other is starting from square one with a first-time NFL head coach and a promising but inexperienced rookie at QB.
The Cardinals (2-0) are eight-point favorites against the Jaguars (0-2), but they also know what can happen when NFL teams underestimate an opponent. The game kicks off at 10 a.m. MST Sunday, September 26, at TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, Florida.
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“Any given Sunday in this league, you think you’re hot stuff, and you can go out there and you get whupped by a team you should beat,” Cardinals offensive lineman D.J. Humphries told reporters Friday, September 24. “If you don’t go out there and take it seriously like we’ve been doing this week, that’s exactly what can happen.”
Arizona has been in this situation before. Just last season, the Cardinals were riding high at 2-0 heading into a home game against the winless Detroit Lions.
An inconsistent and turnover-prone performance by the offense kept Detroit in the game, and Arizona’s defense allowed the Lions to move kicker Matt Prater into position for a game-winning, 39-yard field goal.
Whether the Cardinals have learned from that loss remains to be seen, but any field goals from Prater this time around will be a good thing. Arizona signed the 37-year-old kicker to a two-year deal during the offseason.
Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray noted the similarity to last season when asked about the matchup with the Jaguars being a trap game. Following the 26-23 upset by Detroit, the Cardinals dropped to 2-2 with a 31-21 road loss to the Carolina Panthers.
“We were 2-0 last year and kind of s*** the bed the next two,” Murray told reporters.
As for trap games, the reigning NFC Offensive Player of the Week says he doesn’t believe in them.
“If we don’t come to play, we don’t come to play,” Murray said.
‘Any Given Sunday …’
Cardinals general manager Steve Keim says he doesn’t like the term “trap game,” calling it “sort of disrespectful to the other team.”
“All NFL teams have … a level of talent and any given Sunday can beat you,” Keim told Arizona Sports’ “Burns & Gambo” on Friday, September 24. “If we let our guard down and we don’t play at a high level, they’ll beat us.”
Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury said the parity created by the talent level of NFL players has been a “refreshing” change from the college game.
“Week in, week out, you have a chance,” said Kingsbury, 42, the former Texas Tech coach who made the jump to the NFL in 2019. “Any given Sunday, you actually have a chance to defeat that team.”
Jaguars coach Urban Meyer has started his NFL coaching career 0-2. Meyer, 57, has the third-highest winning percentage (.854) in college football history, including national championship seasons at Florida (2006 and 2008) and Ohio State (2014).
When asked about the parallels between himself and Meyer, Kingsbury quipped, “Two wildly successful college coaches.”
While Kingsbury’s offenses gained a lot of yards, he only had two winning seasons with the Red Raiders and posted a 35-40 record during his six-year tenure.
A win in Jacksonville would give the Cardinals their first 3-0 start since 2015, which is also the last time Arizona made the playoffs.
‘Everybody’s Good’ in the NFL
The “any given Sunday” mantra was a weeklong theme among players and coaches who met with the media as the Cardinals prepared to face the Jaguars.
“In the NFL, that’s how trap games happen because everybody’s good,” Humphries said. “You think you can go out here and think you’re supposed to blow this team out, and the next thing you know, you’re in a fourth-quarter brawl.”
Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph says there’s no such thing as “games that we should win.”
“It’s going to be hard to win on Sunday,” Joseph said. “It’s the NFL, guys. Every week, if you’re not playing your best ball, you can lose.”
The Cardinals came close to finding that out in Week 2 against the Minnesota Vikings. Arizona overcame a sluggish start and a 20-7 first-half deficit to defeat Minnesota 34-33.
Despite a better showing in the second half, the Cardinals still needed a missed 37-yard field goal from Vikings kicker Greg Joseph to escape with the victory Sunday, September 19.
“If we don’t get a little luck, we’re 1-1,” said Humphries, 27, now in his seventh NFL season.
Knowing they came so close to losing to the Vikings has the Cardinals focused on cleaning up their mistakes as they prepare for the Jaguars, he said.
“The vibes in the building were kind of like, ‘We got away with one on Sunday.’ There’s a lot of stuff to clean up on that film,” Humphries said.