Having the No. 1 offense in the NFL and the No. 5 defense didn't mean much to the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC Championship when they were thoroughly dominated by the Carolina Panthers.
The 49-15 defeat ended a season for the Cardinals that was led on offense by a group of aging veterans, including 36-year-old quarterback Carson Palmer, and now the window is closing for a team that hasn't found a young passer to serve as his eventual replacement.
Palmer finished the game with four interceptions and the Cardinals had a total of seven turnovers, but at a press conference on Monday, general manager Steve Keim backed Palmer and said the team's top offseason priority is to "create a pass rush." Keim joined the "Doug and Wolf" show on Arizona Sports 98.7 on Monday morning and said that Palmer "will bounce back and be ready in 2016":
"I don't think he performed particularly well but I would say that goes for a lot of our players," Keim said. "You look at the big picture and some of our stars had a rough night. But make no mistake, we wouldn't have been in the position we were in without Carson Palmer and his play this year."
Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians also came to Palmer's defense after his poor showing against the Panthers:
"Carson didn't lose the damn game, there's nothing wrong with his damn finger." - Bruce Arians #AZvsCAR
— Adam Green (@theAdamGreen) January 25, 2016
On Sunday, the Cardinals sacked Cam Newton just once, and they only managed to bring down Aaron Rodgers one time in the week prior as well. In the regular season, the Cardinals finished with 36 sacks, making them one of only two playoff teams below the league average, along with the Seattle Seahawks.
Despite finishing No. 20 in the NFL in sacks, defensive backs like Patrick Peterson and Tyrann Mathieu helped the team finish No. 8 in pass defense. But as the year went on, the Cardinals started getting desperate to find some help rushing the passer, signing Dwight Freeney in October and Jason Babin after the regular season ended, each of whom are 35.
Freeney led the team in sacks with eight, but with his 36th birthday less than a month away, it's tough to imagine the Cardinals will feel content continuing to rely on him to provide consistent pressure.
In the latest mock draft from SB Nation's Dan Kadar, he projects the Cardinals to select Eastern Kentucky pass rusher Noah Spence, but even that might not be enough. Pass rushers are notorious for slow starts to their NFL careers, like 2015 second-round pick Markus Golden, who led the team in quarterback hurries but tallied just four sacks as a rookie. Given Keim's comments about the urgency of upgrading the group, it would be a surprise if the team didn't attempt to make additions in free agency.
Keim hasn't been one to splurge in a big way, though. The Cardinals gave Jared Veldheer a five-year, $35 million contract in 2014 and Mike Iupati a five-year, $40 million deal in 2015, but have mostly given the biggest contracts to players already on the team like Larry Fitzgerald, Calais Campbell and even Palmer, who originally signed a two-year, $16 million deal with the Cardinals before receiving a big extension in November 2014.
But if the plan for the Cardinals is to squeeze the last good football that the team can out of players like Palmer and Fitzgerald, then the time to compete for a Super Bowl is quickly running out and opening up the pocketbooks might be a necessity before it's too late.