The Kansas City Chiefs steamrolled the Arizona Cardinals, 44-21, in a game that felt over after the first quarter of action.
"They kicked our ass," quarterback Kyler Murray succinctly put it after the game Sunday.
The Cardinals' defense had zero answers for Patrick Mahomes and the K.C. offense, allowing the quarterback to dice them up for 360 yards and five touchdowns. The offense couldn't keep pace, looking lost for long stretches as Murray put up just 193 yards and two garbage-time TDs.
"I think key moments of that game we hurt ourselves," Murray said. "I know we hurt ourselves, shot ourselves in the foot in a lot of those moments. Credit to them, like I said. There's no shying away from what happened. But as far as us, you look in the mirror -- attention to detail. The little things, the little things, the little things, we did not execute in the moments where we needed to. And that's what happens when you play a good team."
After last year's hot start, the Cardinals have withered. Sunday's offensive performance looked identical to how Kliff Kingsbury's club performed down the stretch in 2021. There was no rhythm to the offense, the ground game was nonexistent, and Murray was under heat -- pressured on 27.8 percent of his dropbacks, per Next Gen Stats.
It's just one game, but the performance is an ominous sign for the start of the 2022 campaign.
"Gotta lock in. I think it was good for this to happen to us," Murray said. "You can't feel yourself in this league, you get embarrassed. That's kinda like I said, kinda what happened today. Good team over there. They executed, you could tell. There was a complete difference. Energy was higher. And they didn't shoot themselves in the foot. That's what's gonna happen when you do those things."
The Cards face the Las Vegas Raiders next Sunday with a chance to prove Week 1 was an aberration against a good Chiefs squad, not an indication of how things will continue to devolve in the desert.
