The Arizona Cardinals, after their ugly 44-22 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, are midway through answering one of the bigger questions of the 2025 season. Unfortunately, it’s not an answer that looks promising.

The Cardinals play in arguably the toughest division in football. The rest of the daunting NFC West currently owns a collective 20-8 record. Seattle and Los Angeles are tied at the top with 7-2 records, while the closest team to Arizona’s 3-6 record is the San Francisco 49ers, at 6-4.

It’s an extremely tough environment to contend in, especially while in the midst of a rebuild. But Arizona simply has not made the necessary jump in that regard, and Sunday’s loss furthers the inter-divisional concerns.

Cardinals Still Not Hanging with NFC West

With the costly, blowout loss, the Cardinals are now 0-6 against the Seahawks since the beginning of the Jonathan Gannon era. Neither Kyler Murray nor any other Cardinals QB has defeated Seattle since Colt McCoy in the 2021 season.

The Seahawks have been a thorn in Arizona’s side for some time. They’re a tough matchup, no doubt. But it hasn’t just been Seattle. The Cardinals, under Gannon, are a dismal 3-12 against the NFC West. All three of those victories came in the 2024 season, in which Arizona pounced on the Rams and swept the least-potent iteration of a banged-up 49ers squad of the last several years.

The Cardinals did face a tough matchup coming into Lumen Field, with a struggling Arizona offensive line set to take on one of the toughest defensive lines in football. That showed up immediately in the form of two strip-sack fumbles on QB Jacoby Brissett.

But Sunday’s loss was not a simple talent deficiency. Certainly, Brissett’s 22-of-44 day was not the ideal QB performance, and the Cardinals’ OL did not win individual matchups at a high rate, but one thing was clear — Seattle’s coaching staff knew exactly what to do to the Cardinals, and Arizona had no answers. They simply looked unprepared.

Seahawks Gameplan Stymied Cardinals

Twice in the first quarter, the Cardinals ran the ball in short-yardage situations. Both times, they appeared to pull interior OL away from the dangerous Seattle DTs. That resulted in Arizona’s RBs being stuffed in the backfield.

And in terms of QB protection, the Cardinals were woefully deficient, as well. Arizona allowed 23 pressures to the Seahawks’ pass rush — the ninth-most of any team in a game this season.

That was by design. Seahawks DL Byron Murphy II told the Seattle media the plan was to create less room for Brissett to stand tall and step up in the pocket, rather than focusing on a containment strategy that might be utilized against a QB like Kyler Murray.

“Because Murray, he likes to run around in the pocket and everything. Brissett, he’s just a guy. He sits there. He’s a sitting duck. Sometimes he likes to escape the pocket stepping up so [the gameplan] really was just trying to push the pocket back on Brissett,” Murphy said.

It may seem like a football no-brainer, but it highlights the fact that Arizona has — especially offensively — looked unprepared or stubborn at times this season, even acknolwedging the boost provided by Brissett in his first three starts. The Cardinals tried to run their offense the way they wanted to early on Sunday (utilizing developing play-action and pulling OL), and that played directly into the Seahawks’ gameplan.

There was even an instance in which three different Cardinals o-linemen focused on DL Leonard Williams, leaving an open hole for Seattle’s other oncoming rushers to race toward Brissett.

“We changed the protection on that one… we had everybody accounted for except the [middle linebacker],” Gannon said in his Monday press conference.

“They do a good job, coach McDonald does a good job… I thought, for the most part, we operated well [in pass protection]. They did get us on one, with something they were doing, but we had an answer. We didn’t get to the answer. That’s my fault.

“There’s other ones that we got some [single matchups], and we’ve just got to win a little bit quicker. Protection issues, if they’re putting a lot of pressure on the quarterback, it falls onto all 11. It falls on the play call, the detail, how we’re coaching it. We definitely can’t let the quarterback stand back there and get hit like that,” Gannon said.

It’s not to suggest the Cardinals did not try to adjust some of those protection schemes mid-game. But it appeared that both Seattle’s gameplan and execution outclassed Arizona immediately, and devastatingly so. When playing into the Seahawks’ hands leads to such disastrous early results, it makes those adjustments less effective staring down a 35-0 deficit.

“Nobody’s looking around like, ‘How did that happen?’ We collectively allowed that to happen, all of us in there,” Gannon said. “So you take that on the chin and you move on.”

Sometimes, opposing coaching staffs are going to have the right calls in the right moments. But it has been a concerning trend to watch the Cardinals consistently look like a poor matchup against divisional opponents. Arizona is not going to find its way to a playoff berth anytime soon if its current NFC West track record continues.

Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay are top-tier coaches. McDonald certainly appears to be headed in that direction, as well. Gannon has created a positive culture in Arizona, but the Cardinals need to see Gannon and his staff go toe-to-toe with his divisional colleagues on a more consistent basis. Games like Sunday suggest they’re further away from that reality than was expected.

Gannon also said the Cardinals would not be making any changes to their coaching staff. Improvement will need to come from within, if it’s not already too late.