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The Arizona Cardinals had a bad offensive performance on Sunday in their 37-14 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. It was their worst offensive performance of the season.
How bad was it?
They scored a season-low 14 points and gained a season-low 233 yards. Do you think that is bad?
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It gets worse.
That performance came against the Bengals, who have allowed the most yards in the NFL and the second-most points in the league. The fewest yards the Bengals had allowed previously was 317.
Guess what? It gets even worse.
The 233 yards, as bad as it is for an offensive performance, is misleading.
Of the 233 yards, 149 came in two fourth-quarter drives in clear garbage time. They trailed 37-7 before those two possessions. In the first three quarters, they had seven possessions, punted six times, picked up only four first downs and had only 84 yards. They went three-and-out five times.
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Of the 84 yards in the first three quarters, 70 came on their one touchdown drive in the second quarter, with 38 coming on Michael Wilson's touchdown. The other six possessions, they gained 14 yards.
Quarterback Jacoby Brissett's final numbers looked fine, going 21-for-37 passing for 212 yards and two touchdowns. However, before the fourth quarter, he was 6-for-16 for 74 yards and a score, and 38 of those came on one play.
Over the last eight games since the Cardinals beat the Dallas Cowboys and named Brissett the starter, the offense has averaged only 18.5 points per game and has not scored more than 20 points in the last six games. And that has happened while playing five games when losing by three or more scores, giving them plenty of garbage time to get easy yards and points.
Brissett himself is having a solid statistical year. He has 21 touchdown passes to seven interceptions and has passed for a career-high 3,123 yards. However, those numbers come in the context of going 1-10 in his 11 starts and leading an offense that has gone downhill over the last two months. Even his numbers on Sunday didn't look bad, passing for 212 yards and two touchdowns, but 74 yards came before the Cardinals trailed by 30.
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Sadly, it means that Brissett's numbers are largely empty numbers. What do they matter if they don't score consistently and trail most the game?
As bad as things looked early in the season, what we saw on Sunday was worse.
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This article originally appeared on Cards Wire: The Cardinals were terrible offensively against the Bengals.
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