NFL Football Scores - Playoff Week 1

NFL Football Scores - Playoff Week 1

Technically, I guess we can no longer say that the Panthers have a losing record. Their defense held Arizona to 78 yards of total offense, the lowest in NFL playoff history, breaking a record that was more than 50 years old.

It was a sad year for the Cardinals, who started the year 11-3, with two of those losses coming to great teams (Denver and Seattle). Life gets difficult when you have to play a quarterback whose presence on the roster was probably a surprise to his own mother. Here's how many points they scored in their last 8 games, the games after Carson Palmer was lost for the year (including today): 14, 3, 18, 17, 12, 6, 17, 16.

It's a credit to their defense that they won three of those games, because winning ain't easy in the NFL when you're scoring 13 points per game. The big offenses, like Denver and Green Bay, averaged 30 per game this year, and even the punchless Jaguars averaged 16.

Here's a comparison of the Cardinals offensive performance before and after the injury to Carson Palmer, including the playoff game (by games started):

Palmer: 9 games, 8-1 record (.889), 27 PPG.
Stanton: 5 games, 3-2 record (.600), 13 PPG
Lindley: 3 games, 0-3 record (.000), 13 PPG