Oct 21, 2026 · 41 min · 26 segments
After the Cardinals upset the Rams in Week 6 18-16, Jess and Seth react to and analyze the game. They talk about whether the win says more about the Cardinals' play or what's going on with the Rams…
Hello, Arizona Cardinals fans, and welcome to the latest edition of the Rise Up Seared podcast, the best hour of Cardinals talk on the web.
I'm your host, Jess Root from CardsWire.com, the USA Today NFL Wireside that covers Arizona Cardinals.
We look back at the Cardinals' surprising week six win over the Los Angeles Rams, Seth Cox from RevengeoftheBirds.com, SB Nation's Arizona Cardinals site, and This is not what we expected, but the Cardinals picked up an upset win, 18-16, no touchdowns, all field goals, beating the LA Rams at SoFi Stadium on Sunday to seemingly, like all the noise about benchings and firings and billboards, suddenly everything is kind of okay in Cardinals land right now.
Yeah, and it was – I mean, the impressiveness of the performance on one side of the ball cannot be overstated, and we'll get to that, you know, throughout this episode.
But the fact that they won, the fact that they had, you know, maybe their best defensive performance of the Nick Rallis era – The fact that we saw a team that was built in the Jonathan Gannon mold come out victorious, right? It's hilarious to think back and look at it, but that was how Jonathan Gannon wanted to play every game, right? Run the ball, control the clock.
And the fact that they went into this without their left tackle, without their right guard, without their highly touted, lauded rookie.
Like, it just... sometimes sometimes you know the best laid plans in terms of how you're going to win games is not what's actually going to win you football games and that's okay because winning football games and winning in the nfl is really hard so uh especially michael fleur yeah it wasn't the offensive performance you maybe had hoped who cares man like win football games learn how to win learn how to be a team that competes week in and week out as opposed to kind of what we've seen outside of game one.
Yeah, and the interesting thing is for me, I don't know if it's the case for you, watching and covering that game, you just felt, oh, because the Cardinals had never put a defensive performance together that was a full game like that.
I was expecting, I'm like, okay, second half rolls around, fourth quarter, it's going to go south, it's going to go sideways, the Rams are going to get it together, and it just never did.
and so it was a complete performance it was a complete shocker and the fact that they did it with no touchdowns and it's like some of the play you're like oh there's the offense it's like in my heart of hearts i was like it's gonna fall apart it's gonna fall apart and then it never did but that led me to the question seth and is this is this does this win say more about the cardinals or does it say more about the rams or rams that came into the season absolutely loaded with all the expectations of the world.
And to me, and we were just talking about this before we got on, this Rams team seems to be eerily playing out like the cardinals 2016 year when they were so great um the previous year in 2015 they go into 2016 they had the amazon series and bruce harris is talking about we were here to win super bowl rings not just get to the super bowl and they had all the expectations they just couldn't quite get it had a great offense that statistically a great offense statistically a good defense and then special teams was just the problem and that's kind of been the issue for the rams because They've got some good defensive metrics.
They've been really good offensively, and whether it's given up big returns or missing field goals, getting field goals blocked, and they gave them a big, big return to the Cardinals.
um blake groupie goes and tears his acl trying to knock devin duvernay out of bounds and so they're not going to kick her anymore and ultimately it led so they had to go for two which that two-point conversion failed and it probably one or other two times they would have kicked the field goal but they didn't so they went for it and it sort of altered the the trajectory of the game and so i'm like the way the season is going for the rams like Also kind of looking at the Chargers win.
For you, was that win more about how the Cardinals played or was it more about how the Rams just can't get themselves on track?
And I mean, we talk about it all the time and we talked about it with Carson Palmer.
We talked about it with with, you know, I think Kurt Warner still had a little bit left in the tank.
Hello, Arizona Cardinals fans, and welcome to the latest edition of the Rise Up Seared podcast, the best hour of Cardinals talk on the web.
I'm your host, Jess Root from CardsWire.com, the USA Today NFL Wireside that covers Arizona Cardinals.
We look back at the Cardinals' surprising week six win over the Los Angeles Rams, Seth Cox from RevengeoftheBirds.com, SB Nation's Arizona Cardinals site, and This is not what we expected, but the Cardinals picked up an upset win, 18-16, no touchdowns, all field goals, beating the LA Rams at SoFi Stadium on Sunday to seemingly, like all the noise about benchings and firings and billboards, suddenly everything is kind of okay in Cardinals land right now.
Yeah, and it was – I mean, the impressiveness of the performance on one side of the ball cannot be overstated, and we'll get to that, you know, throughout this episode.
But the fact that they won, the fact that they had, you know, maybe their best defensive performance of the Nick Rallis era – The fact that we saw a team that was built in the Jonathan Gannon mold come out victorious, right? It's hilarious to think back and look at it, but that was how Jonathan Gannon wanted to play every game, right? Run the ball, control the clock.
And the fact that they went into this without their left tackle, without their right guard, without their highly touted, lauded rookie.
Like, it just... sometimes sometimes you know the best laid plans in terms of how you're going to win games is not what's actually going to win you football games and that's okay because winning football games and winning in the nfl is really hard so uh especially michael fleur yeah it wasn't the offensive performance you maybe had hoped who cares man like win football games learn how to win learn how to be a team that competes week in and week out as opposed to kind of what we've seen outside of game one.
Yeah, and the interesting thing is for me, I don't know if it's the case for you, watching and covering that game, you just felt, oh, because the Cardinals had never put a defensive performance together that was a full game like that.
I was expecting, I'm like, okay, second half rolls around, fourth quarter, it's going to go south, it's going to go sideways, the Rams are going to get it together, and it just never did.
and so it was a complete performance it was a complete shocker and the fact that they did it with no touchdowns and it's like some of the play you're like oh there's the offense it's like in my heart of hearts i was like it's gonna fall apart it's gonna fall apart and then it never did but that led me to the question seth and is this is this does this win say more about the cardinals or does it say more about the rams or rams that came into the season absolutely loaded with all the expectations of the world.
And to me, and we were just talking about this before we got on, this Rams team seems to be eerily playing out like the cardinals 2016 year when they were so great um the previous year in 2015 they go into 2016 they had the amazon series and bruce harris is talking about we were here to win super bowl rings not just get to the super bowl and they had all the expectations they just couldn't quite get it had a great offense that statistically a great offense statistically a good defense and then special teams was just the problem and that's kind of been the issue for the rams because They've got some good defensive metrics.
They've been really good offensively, and whether it's given up big returns or missing field goals, getting field goals blocked, and they gave them a big, big return to the Cardinals.
um blake groupie goes and tears his acl trying to knock devin duvernay out of bounds and so they're not going to kick her anymore and ultimately it led so they had to go for two which that two-point conversion failed and it probably one or other two times they would have kicked the field goal but they didn't so they went for it and it sort of altered the the trajectory of the game and so i'm like the way the season is going for the rams like Also kind of looking at the Chargers win.
For you, was that win more about how the Cardinals played or was it more about how the Rams just can't get themselves on track?
And I mean, we talk about it all the time and we talked about it with Carson Palmer.
We talked about it with with, you know, I think Kurt Warner still had a little bit left in the tank.
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