Super Wild Card Weekend - CARDINALS @ RAMS

ARIZONA CARDINALS @ LOS ANGELES RAMS
Time: 8:15 PM ET, Jan. 17, 2022
Location: SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, Calif.
Current Line: LAR -4  Total: 50.5

For the third time this season, the Arizona Cardinals will play the Los Angeles Rams. For most of the 2021 season, the Cardinals controlled the NFC West Division. Then, an injury here and a letdown there knocked Arizona out of the top spot but allowed them to back into the playoffs. Arizona lost four of their last five games to finish 11-6, a game behind the division champion Rams (12-5).

What’s interesting is that in both previous games played by these two teams, the road team was the winner. The Cardinals won at SoFi Stadium, site of Monday night’s game, on Oct. 3 beating the Rams rather easily 37-20. Los Angeles then repaid Arizona beating them 30-23 on Dec. 13. It was that loss that triggered the Cardinal’s final stretch of the season. A week later in Detroit, Arizona lost 30-12 to the Lions.

One of the big issues for Arizona has been the injury to WR DeAndre Hopkins. The Cardinals haven’t been the same since. They managed the 12 points against Detroit, 16 in a loss to Indianapolis, and 25 in their win over Dallas. Last week, they lost to Seattle 38-30 in the regular season finale. Looking closer though, we find that Arizona scored one of their touchdowns on an interception return and had a second interception returned deep into Seattle territory. For what it’s worth, the Cardinals offense accounted for 16 of the 30 points against Seattle.

At one point this season, the Cardinals were ranked second in the NFL in Expected Points Added/Play and third in Offensive Success Rate. Now, they rank 16th and 14th, respectively. Arizona can’t run the ball and RB James Conner is questionable for Monday’s game with a rib injury.

The Rams are a flawed team as well. It starts at quarterback where Matthew Stafford was the NFL’s best quarterback in terms of passer rating for most of the first nine weeks of the season. Since then, he has thrown a league-high 11 interceptions. Four of those were returned for touchdowns and Stafford wound up being tied for the NFL lead in picks with 17.

Then, there is Stafford’s playoff experience. It’s all of three games. All three games were with Detroit and all three were losses, which is no surprise. Like the Cardinals, the Rams struggle to run the football too, but they did manage to score 30 or more points in three of their last five games. The Rams won five straight before losing to San Francisco 27-24 in the season finale last week.

So, it comes down to two teams with some serious flaws. One bonus is that the Cardinals will get pass rusher and former NFL Defensive Player of the Year J.J. Watt back after missing 10 games. In the seven games Watt played this season, Arizona is 7-0. They went 4-6 without him. Could he make that much of an impact?

The Rams are actually 9-1 straight up and 8-1-1 against the spread against Arizona in the last 10 games between the two teams. L.A. has the best wide receiver in the game right now in Cooper Kupp (1,947 receiving yards) and a defense that allowed a little over 18 points per game in its final six contests of the season.

Arizona did something this season that only eight other teams in NFL history have done. The Cardinals won eight road games this season finishing 8-1 away from home. They were also a healthy 8-1 ATS in those nine road games. The one road game that they lost and didn’t cover was the game in Detroit.

We can also look at Arizona head coach Kliff Kingsbury’s history as an underdog. Under Kingsbury, the Cardinals are 18-7-2 as an underdog. They have covered in those games by an average of 6.3 points per game. That includes a 6-0 ATS mark this season and the Cardinals actually won all six of those games outright.

Since 2003 in wild card round games, when a home favorite faces a division opponent, the home favorite is just 3-9-1 ATS and the home favorite has lost five of the last six. This is tough pick, but we’ll take Arizona +4.

The 49ers take on the Cowboys Sunday at 4:30PM ET. Stream it live on Paramount+. Try it FREE!

Full  schedule for Super Wild Card Weekend here can be found here!