Posted by ESPN.com's Mike Sando
Adrian Wilson makes or breaks the Cardinals' defense. When Wilson is doing his thing as a blitzer or eighth man in the box, Arizona causes problems for opposing offenses. He puts opposing quarterbacks in danger.
My impression watching the game Thursday night was that the Cardinals might have been protecting Wilson's injured shoulder. They wanted him to play, but getting Wilson on the field only five days after he suffered a shoulder injury might have led to compromises in how the Cardinals played their defense.
That is only my impression. Ken Whisenhunt and staff might have another explanation for their tactics during a 48-20 defeat at Philadelphia. Eagles coach Andy Reid did say the Cardinals took a new approach on defense Thursday night.
Reid: "They had been a Cover 3 team, primarily. Single safety middle, and brought one of the two safeties up into the box. Either [S Antrel] Rolle or [S Adrian] Wilson, who are both very good. Wilson is probably, if not the best in the league right now, one of the best.
"With that, they decided they were going to change against us and play a soft Cover 2, Cover 4, and kind of blend that in there. That's the way they started the game for the first couple of series. With that, what that does is it limits your down-the-field throws and makes you concentrate more on catching the football and running with it in a little shorter of a passing game. Then, running the football.
"Those were the two things we did and that's why you saw what you saw. Then they changed. They kind of went back as the game went on. By that time, we had a pretty decent lead."
Wilson missed one game to injury this season. Arizona's defense allowed six touchdowns that day during a 56-35 defeat to the Jets. The Cardinals' frequent turnovers also fueled the Jets' offense that day. But not having a healthy Wilson clearly hurts Arizona.
Update: tespy321 points to Rod Hood's absence as the primary reason for the Cardinals' adjustment in the secondary. That makes sense completely after watching Arizona struggle to replace him against the Giants. As tespy321 wrote, "Rod Hood is not a side note people!! He is the BEST (maybe only) cover guy on the Cardinals! Because he was out, the Cardinals got scared and had to use 5 defensive backs to cover up for his loss. There was no way they were gonna bring Wilson or Rolle up to the line, like they had in the past, and leave Eric Green and DRC alone back there...yikes!!"
Sando joined ESPN.com in 2007 after nine seasons covering the Seattle Seahawks for the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune. He lives in the Seattle-Tacoma area with his wife and two sons.
