What did the Cardinals prove with their victory over the Rams?

Kyler Murray delivered a perfect game – in terms of passer rating, rookie Marvin Harrison Jr. delivered a great performance and the Arizona Cardinals’ pass rush reached Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams.

The combination of these factors led to a 41-10 victory for Arizona (1-1) against a team it had not beaten at State Farm Stadium since 2014.

After a close loss in Buffalo to start the year, we reached out to our show hosts and writers to gauge the mood for the Cardinals immediately following their Week 2 win.

Here’s what they take away from their dominating performance against Los Angeles.

Our reactions to the Cardinals’ victory over the Rams in Week 2

Luke Lapinski, co-host of Wolf & Luke: The Cardinals entered this game 3-19 in their last 22 games at State Farm Stadium. They hadn’t beaten the Rams in Arizona since 2014 — back then they were the St. Louis Rams and Andre Ellington was the Cardinals’ best runner — and overall they were just 2-13 in their last 15 games against the Rams.

Oh yeah, they’ve also been 1-11 in the division since 2022.

Your answer? You give Sean McVay the most one-sided defeat of all time.

That’s a pretty good answer, and it started with Marvin Harrison Jr. The first two points of the game came from Marvin Harrison Jr., and they were the kind of stirring plays that make you believe this offense is capable of anything now that he’s here.

Maybe it is. The Cardinals have scored 69 points in two games — only New Orleans has scored more as of this writing — and that’s against two pretty strong opponents, the Bills and Rams. Kyler Murray’s passer rating on Sunday was a perfect 158.3. The Cardinals outgained LA by 178 yards (231 to 53).

And it’s possible that MHJ is simply impossible to cover on some plays.

Additionally, you could argue that the defense’s performance on Sunday was the most encouraging part. Budda Baker was everywhere, starting with a great stop on Cooper Kupp on fourth down to start. This was one of those games where it looked like there were seven or eight Buddas on the field, and his teammates followed suit. Dennis Gardeck had three sacks, Zaven Collins and Krys Barnes added one each, LJ Collier recovered a fumble, and Arizona smothered Kyren Williams — the running back who gave them 362 yards and three touchdowns last season — to just 25 yards on the ground.

Baker summed it up afterward as you’d expect him to: “This proves we can win a game.” Of course he’s right, but now last week’s narrow loss in Buffalo looks a lot more acceptable, if not downright encouraging, especially after what the Bills did in Miami on Thursday. And the Week 2 performance was a taste of the best-case scenario that the most optimistic Cardinals fans have been imagining since April. It’s no longer a mere hypothesis, though; it’s reality. It’s happened. Now they just need to figure out how to do it consistently.

Dave Burns, co-host of Burns & Gambo: You’ve heard of things ending with a whimper rather than a bang? That was a bang. A big, loud bang that shook the windows. An eight-game division losing streak. Over. A decade without a home win against the Rams. Over. Nineteen losses in the last 22 home games? I guess it’s yet to be announced, but it definitely feels like it’s over. If it is, and if Sean McVay’s reign over the Cards is over (or at least on hold), then we’re talking about it now.

I guess you could say that was to be expected given the Rams’ injury situation, and given the state of their offensive line, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the Cardinals won. It was the dominance of victory; a roundhouse 40 burger thrown at their personal tormentor in front of a home crowd that has been starving for this moment in this building. The defense hit some notes most didn’t think they had in them. James Connor continues to do the nasty work.

But most of all, this day will be remembered as the day Kyler Murray and Marvin Harrison Jr. showed a chemistry that would have made Walter White jealous. It was funny and enlightening to hear Harrison lament that Murray’s only four incomplete passes were his fault. The two jaw-dropping touchdowns and Murray’s virtually perfect passer rating weren’t enough to satisfy him. He wants more and so do we.

Is this win proof that the Cardinals are better than most people think — or at least the possibility? It’s really too early to tell. But this result, in this building, against this coach, with these two players leading the way, is as good a starting point as you could hope for.

John Gambadoro, co-host of Burns & Gambo: I think that was easily the best game I’ve ever seen from Kyler Murray. We wanted elite. And we got elite. Forget perfection. For me, his ability to make accurate passes, his feel for the long ball, his ability to create time and space for his receivers to get open, and his football IQ were on full display.

The Cardinals exorcised some demons against McVay and the Rams and turned the game into an early bloodbath. Murray couldn’t have played better. First drive: touchdown. Second drive: touchdown. Third drive: touchdown. Fourth drive: field goal.

First drive of the second half: touchdown. Cardinals lead 31-3. Game over. Absolutely nothing not to like.

The difficulty level of the first touchdown pass to Marvin Harrison Jr. – I mean, how many quarterbacks in this league can make that pass? The second touchdown to MHJ, where he rolled to the right to buy time as Harrison crossed the field and then turned back onto the field, was beautiful. My favorite play was the third touchdown: Murray’s improvisation and fighting skills caused Jared Verse to miss not once but twice, and Braden Fiske to do the same as he found Elijah Higgins for a touchdown that capped a 13-play, 99-yard run. Nothing not to like today. Kyler played like a top-notch quarterback and gave Cardinals fans a reason to believe not only in him, but in this season.

Tyler Drake, Cardinals reporter and co-host of Cardinal Corner Podcasts: We gave the Cardinals a lot of (justified) grief last week for their in-game adjustments, or lack thereof. Marvin Harrison Jr. was irrelevant, there were no long balls, and defensive pressure was almost nonexistent. Overall, it was just a tough blow for a team that started out full steam ahead in Buffalo.

However, against the divisional bullies, the Los Angeles Rams, the Cardinals made all the adjustments we had all been screaming about just a week earlier.

Harrison nearly tripled his target share (eight) and reached the end zone twice. The Cardinals also threw long passes much more often. They didn’t hit all of them and they didn’t have to! The threat alone was enormous. And last but not least, the Barbarian showed flashes of his 2020 self, collecting three sacks in the win and leading a much improved pass rush.

Even though some things went wrong – James Conners’ fumble led to a touchdown by Trey McBride – the Cardinals still emerged victorious on Sunday.

There haven’t been this many complete games for Arizona in a long time. Cards fans, enjoy this one a little longer, especially considering how tight a stranglehold LA has had on Arizona for the past decade.

Kellan Olson, co-host of Arizona Sports at Night: I’m going to assume that most of the words you’re reading are legitimately about Kyler Murray and Marvin Harrison Jr. I’m going to take a step back here and give the defense a lot of credit. Yes, the Rams’ offensive line was undermanned. Yes, Puka Nacua was out and Cooper Kupp only played half of this game. But Arizona’s defense was in such a shaky position early in the season and after Week 1 that we didn’t know if they could take advantage of a vulnerable group like the Rams.

The Cardinals did it. And they did it in a big way. Aside from Budda Baker’s lone blunder on a deep pass, it was a standout performance from him. The front seven did well to fill gaps in the running game, while a questionable secondary wasn’t tested too much, with a pass rush actually strong enough to ambush a struggling pass-blocking unit. Dennis Gardeck had three sacks and continued to be a compiler no matter what role he played.

This just looked like a game when defensive coordinator Nick Rallis was pushing all the right buttons and staying one step ahead of Sean McVay. A reminder to put next to no blame on him when this defense inevitably falters due to its deficiencies.

That was the kind of thing good football teams do. You have a division rival in town that you know you can beat in what is probably the second highest winning game on the schedule until December. Arizona dominated them. If you want to talk about litmus test games, let’s look at what this team is really capable of next week when they face a 1-1 Detroit Lions team.

Mitch Vareldzis, co-host of Arizona Sports at Night: BEAT LA BEAT LA BEAT LA This was the most fun I’ve had watching the Cardinals play a football game since I started working here in 2018.

*Stefon from SNL voice*

This game had everything! Marvin Harrison Jr.’s breakout two-touchdown performance. A pass rush led by Dennis “The Barbarian” Gardeck. And Kyler Murray getting that burden off his shoulders by beating the Rams and Sean McVay in front of his home crowd. Plus, I’m much more excited for the Lions to come to town next week. The Cardinals have a chance to show their dominance for the second year in a row against one of the NFC’s best.

Kevin Zimmerman, senior editor of ArizonaSports.com: A man — whose name begins with W and rhymes with “Gulf” — advised me not to use transitive theory when the Bills rolled over the Miami Dolphins on Thursday. But I’m going to lean more heavily on that result in judging the third-party Cardinals and say that the Arizona-Buffalo contest says a lot.

The defensive line didn’t do too badly against the Rams. The offensive line got the running game going without any problems. And of course the passing game found Marvin Harrison Jr. – at least for one quarter.

It was predictable that a good football team could beat the Rams, whose offensive line was decimated and whose receiver corps was without their Nos. 1 and 2 at the end of Sunday’s game. But a 31-point win over Los Angeles — and a 31-point win over coach Sean McVay — means that a loss to Buffalo should at least not mean Arizona’s high preseason expectations were not met.

After two games they are within reach of the highest expectations.

Follow @AZSports