The Cardinals have two major fatal flaws. The first one is on offense, where they have a player at right tackle in DJ Humphries with 0 NFL starts. Humphries sat for the entire season behind Bobby Massie, whin the offseason signed with the Bears. While the Patriots may not have an All-Pro pass rusher like a Jones, they do have an array of talent on the edge. The Patriots can opt to use a rotation of Chris Long and second year guy Trey Flowers at left end. Outside of Humphries, the Cardinals have a very experienced offensive line with Jared Veldheer at LT, Mike Iupati at LG, A.Q. Shipley at C, and Evan Mathis at RG.
The other achilles heel is at LB. AZ doesn't have a lot of depth there, especially inside. The Patriots offense has a way of exposing linebackers that can't cover in space. With the new Twin Towers Gronk and Bennett, the Pats can utilize formations that force the defense to tip their coverage to the QB and if it's man coverage with a LB covering one of the two TEs, it will be exploited. The two starting inside linebackers for the Cardinals are Kevin Minter, who's more a North to South thumper and Deone Bucannon, a converted safety who is very undersized at 6'1" 223. If the Patriots can get their lineman blocking at the 2nd level on their runs plays, hopefully Blount will have a good game for himself also.
One last thing I think the Pats are doing right: they are leaving Foxboro earlier than normal.
The team typically travels on Saturdays, so this is a very smart move. I hope they do this for the Broncos game as well. To get the best out of your guys, they need to get acclimated to the surroundings and the environment of the "new" area. Flying out west early gives them enough time to accomplish that.
And the players pretty much agree.
"A guy my size, your body can lock up when you're sitting on a plane for that long of a time," said 6-foot-6, 350-pound defensive tackle
Alan Branch. "It helps to have a day to recover."
"I think it helps with the time change," added receiver
Chris Hogan. "Going across the country, I've always played in the afternoon game, so I've never played at night. So I think the fact you're going a day earlier will definitely help, because you have that whole extra day to adjust and kind of rest for that night game."
Hogan went on to say the Bills would usually travel on Fridays, then have Saturday to "get loose" and ease the pressure of having to rush through the walk-through. I hope this works to their advantage on Sunday night.