The last time that the Arizona Cardinals beat the New England Patriots was in Gillette Stadium in 2012, when Kevin Kolb of all quarterbacks was the starter for Arizona, and a stunted Pats offense and missed game-winning field goal from Stephen Gostkowski all but handed the road team the victory. The last time the Cardinals have beaten the Patriots at home was in 1991, when the team was still playing in Phoenix, when Tom Tupa was still a quarterback and nobody in the world thought he would switch to being a punter. This season, Arizona is trying to break this “curse” on December 15 in their home building, against a Patriots team that is starting forever for the first time in nearly a quarter century. The Cardinals have the talent and the heart, but will it be enough to finally get a win? Let’s take a look at the last five Patriot victories against this team and understand what has kept this streak going on for years and years.
#1: Josh McCown gets the start
In a year where Emmitt Smith was the starting running back for the Arizona Cardinals, the home opener at Sun Devil Stadium was against the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, who had not lost a game since September of 2003. The mismatch was written all over the wall. Despite Arizona miraculously coming back from an eleven point deficit against the Minnesota Vikings to eliminate them from the playoffs at the end of the previous season, everybody knew that the Cardinals were just not a good football team and that it would take years before they got their respect amongst the rest of the league. Josh McCown was heading into his third season and had only won just one game as a starter, while Tom Brady just won his second Super Bowl MVP, so it is very safe to say that this was not going to be much of a contest.
To make a long story short, the Cardinals put up a good fight and tried to keep up, but New England was just the way better team. McCown got sacked five times, a couple of them from Rodney Harrison and Willie McGinest each, and he threw two interceptions with just 160 yards passing. Emmitt Smith scored the only touchdown of the day for Arizona, even with just thirty-one yards on thirteen carries, and their leading receiver was rookie Larry Fitzgerald with five catches for thirty-six. Brady did not have that great of a game either, throwing two picks of his own in the first half, but still threw two touchdown passes and a couple of touchdown passes. However, if it was not for Corey Dillon’s 158 yards on thirty-two carries, the Patriots would not have been able to control the time of possession. It was not exactly the most inspiring victory for New England, but anything to keep the win streak alive would be alright. The Patriots finished the regular season 14-2 and proceeded to run the table in the playoffs, capping it off with another Super Bowl victory, this time against the Philadelphia Eagles in Jacksonville. As for the Cardinals, it was a grueling season yet again. Even though they improved in wins from the previous year, they still went 6-10 and missed the playoffs due to a sputtering offense and just-average defense.
#2: The Snowstorm
When the Patriots visited Arizona in 2004, it was 89 degrees and perfectly sunny. The first time that these teams met in Gillette Stadium, there was nothing but snow and a wind chill of 21. The quarterbacks in this matchup were completely different as well, unsurprising for one and shocking for the other. Tom Brady missed the entire 2008 season due to a torn ACL, thrusting backup quarterback Matt Cassel into the starting role. He had done a pretty nice job taking over, winning nine games by the time they had to play the Cardinals, and there was a very realistic possibility that the Patriots could make it back to the playoffs and win their division. Arizona was also having a Cinderella season of their own. Kurt Warner had a complete renaissance to his career after failing to recapture the magic that he once had in St. Louis for the past seven years, and under new head coach Ken Whisenhunt, his confidence and swagger was back that propelled the team to their best season in years. They might have played in a weak division, but an 8-6 record through fifteen games is very impressive, and they were absolutely a sleeper team to watch out for in the playoffs. Whomever won this game in Foxboro was going to have a way better chance of entering the postseason, so this was a very critical matchup for both teams, especially when it is this late in the year.
What was supposed to be a playoff-like game ended up being a complete blowout. Nothing went right for the Cardinals on both sides of the ball, and the Patriots were ten times more prepared for whatever came their way. Cassel ended up having one of the best games of his career with 345 yards and three touchdown passes, while Warner went six for eighteen before ultimately getting benched in the middle of the third quarter. It was 31-0 at halftime, and the only touchdown for the Cardinals came when they were down by near fifty. When an offense gets held to 36 rushing yards and just three third down conversions in the driving snow, there is no chance of any coming back. But their seasons did not end the way you might think. The Patriots finished the season 11-5, but were eliminated from playoff contention via tiebreaker, one of the very rare occasions that a team with that many wins did not even make it an extra month. The Cardinals on the other hand quickly bounced back. As the fourth seed in the NFC, they made it all the way to the Super Bowl on the arms of Warner and Fitzgerald, only for them to lose in heartbreaking fashion to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the final minutes of play. This would be the last time that Arizona would make it to this point, and they have not even made it past the second round since 2015.
#3: Jimmy G’s First Start
Heading into the 2016 season, the Patriots and Cardinals were predicted to be serious playoff contenders that would not surprise anybody if they made a deep run. Both teams came up short in the conference championship games, one by two and another via total blowout, but this next year was supposed to be made for revenge. However, Tom Brady would not be active for the first four games thanks to the Deflategate suspension, so third-year quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was going to start for the first time in his career. New England reshaped their whole roster on both sides of the ball, while Arizona kept a majority of the core from last season, so this was going to be a heavily anticipated grudge match from start to finish. It was also a revenge game for edge rusher Chandler Jones, who began his career with New England and eventually found himself traded to Arizona in the offseason, so the suspense was real. On Sunday Night Football with Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth on the call, there was a lot to be excited about.
This game certainly lived up to the hype that everybody was expecting. Both offenses were doing everything in their power to win, the defenses forced key stops at critical moments, and the special teams would end up being a huge difference at the end. Although Garoppolo lost a fumble early in the first half, he was sharp and precise during the rest. He finished the game with just nine incompletions and over 260 passing yards, making a case as the best backup quarterback in the league after just one week. The Patriots offense had no problem getting points on the board when they needed to and they were a dominant ten for sixteen on third down, but the problem was that Arizona was not quitting either. Carson Palmer had an efficient 270 yard day with two touchdown passes, David Johnson had an impressive 89 yards on sixteen carries, and Larry Fitzgerald had two scores of his own with 81 receiving yards. Down 23-21, the Cardinals were in position to win the game on their home field, and the offense did everything they could to set up a 47 yard go-ahead field goal by Chandler Catanzaro. Unfortunately, the kick sailed just wide of the uprights and New England escaped with the first victory of the season. It was very gutsy and one that they could have easily lost, but winning on the road without their starting quarterback is still a very impressive feat.
New England went 3-1 without Tom Brady in the lineup, but 11-1 when he returned to the field, sealing up the number one seed in the AFC. The Patriots then proceeded to run it back in the playoffs and win their fifth Super Bowl title in their franchise history. Unfortunately, the Cardinals could not recapture the magic that they had in 2015 and missed the playoffs with a underwhelming 7-8-1 record. Although both sides of the ball were playing efficient and strong, they kept finding themselves in winnable games that they blew away, including that tie against the Seahawks where neither field goal kicker could finish the job.
#4: Cam Steals It from Kyler
The first year of the post-Tom Brady era for the Patriots was definitely frustrating to say the least. Although Cam Newton played pretty well in the first three games of the season, the team stumbled into four straight losses and were 2-5 near the halfway point of the season. Things started to get better, but they were still 4-6 by Week 12, and the playoffs were not even a discussion. The Cardinals were on a completely different path, however. Under second-year head coach and second-year quarterback Kyler Murray, the team got off to a fast 6-4 start and were in a comfortable spot to play an extra month. They had just acquired DeAndre Hopkins in a trade with the Houston Texans, their defense had a lot of solid and young playmakers on all three levels, and the former first overall pick from the year before was beginning to make strides as a legitimate starter. Strangely however, they were only one point favorites on the road, so the odds-makers did not believe that this was going to be an Arizona blowout. Maybe it was because Kyler suffered a sprain in his throwing shoulder, but maybe the world was being set up for yet another Bill Belichick masterpiece.
Arizona got off to a fast start, picking off Cam Newton on his first pass attempt of the game and taking a 10-0 lead in the first quarter, just about what anybody could expect in these types of matchups. The Patriots offense looked apathetic, the defense was starting to break, but a special teams play quickly turned the momentum around. Kickoff returner Donte Moncrief took a 53 yard kickoff and found a lot of space down the right side of the field, taking it all the way to the opponent 46 yard line. This set up a seven yard touchdown from James White, and soon enough, New England was right back into the ball game. Towards the end of the first half, the Cardinals were taking plenty of time off the clock and had successfully marched all the way to the goal-line, but they got stuffed on three tries that forced a fourth down. Instead of kicking the field goal to increase their lead to six, Kingsbury wanted to go for the touchdown and make it more impossible for New England to take the lead. Handing it off to Kenyan Drake, Arizona was expecting the refs to put both of their hands up, but the running back was stuffed behind the line by Ja’Whaun Bentley and a drive that lasted nearly seven minutes ended with zero points. When the third quarter started, the Patriots took all of that momentum at the end of the first half and unleashed it on both sides of the ball. Gunner Olszewski would have had a punt return touchdown if it weren’t for a blindside block by Anfernee Jennings, but they still tied the game at ten after the deficit they had in the first quarter. Three plays later, a Kyler Murray pass was tipped into the air and Adrian Phillips came down with a huge interception that allowed New England to take the lead! However, once the fourth quarter began, Arizona finally got out of their funk and picked up where they left off in the first half. Their ability to run the football plus a few costly defensive penalties allowed Kenyan Drake to punch it into the endzone the way that he couldn’t earlier in the game, and the game was tied right back up at seventeen. After Cam Newton threw another interception, the Cardinals were in position to take the lead with the leg of Zane Gonzalez from forty-five yards, but 2016 repeated itself and the kick was no good. Starting at his own thirty-five yard line, the Patriots were most likely going to punt after being backed up three yards, but a costly unnecessary roughness penalty from Isaiah Simmons put New England back in field goal range. Sure enough, Nick Folk drilled a 50 yard field goal right down the middle, and the Patriots escaped with a down-to-the-wire victory to get just one game under 500.
The Cardinals had lost two games in a row after the week, and unfortunately it did not stop after. Even with an 8-6 record with two games to go, Arizona dropped their final two in agonizing fashion, and they were therefore eliminated from playoff contention. Reality was restored for the Patriots not too long after, losing three of their final four games to miss the postseason at 7-9, the worst season they had since 2000.
#5: Mac Jones vs. Colt McCoy
The latest of these matchups returned to Glendale Arizona in December of 2022 under familiar circumstances. Both the Patriots and Cardinals were trying to keep their seasons alive on a Monday night stage. Arizona was incredibly more desperate given the circumstances. Kingsbury was on the hot seat of potentially getting fired, Kyler Murray was getting more and more frustrated due to the lack of success the team has had, and the internal drama just kept boiling. Heading into this game, the Cardinals were 4-8 and one more loss could potentially eliminate them from playoff contention for good, and this was not going to be any cakewalk. Even in a season with Matt Patricia as the offensive coordinator, New England was 6-6 with a realistic chance of backing into the playoffs as a Wild Card, but there are a couple of asterisks. Mac Jones started to suffer setbacks in his development in his second season, largely due to the guy in charge of the play-calling, but it was also because he suffered an injured ankle earlier in the year and had never been able to bounce back to his true form once he returned. The biggest reason why their season was still hanging in the balance was because their defense still played at an elite level under Belichick, mainly against vastly inferior teams, but did what they could against the stronger ones to make sure it was competitive. If New England lost this game, then it was most likely going to be another seven-win season, the same exact situation that they were in just two years ago.
Just three plays into the game, the Cardinals experienced the worst case scenario. Taking off on a scramble to the right side, Kyler Murray immediately fell to the turf on a non-contact injury, and what was carted off the field. It turned out that he suffered a torn ACL, ending his season and quite possibly any hope that Arizona had left for this team. If there is any silver lining, Colt McCoy did a pretty decent job in the first half, giving his team a three point lead at the break. There were a couple of missed opportunities that he would have loved to have back, but the game was still under their control. But the third quarter was something different. McCoy missing a deep pass to Hollywood Brown on a fourth down on the opening drive is one thing, but for DeAndre Hopkins to fumble the ball and have the Patriots come up with a scoop-and-score on the next shifted the whole momentum of the game. Instead of keeping the lead in their favor, New England was now up by seven, and that was when the Cardinals offense completely shut down. McCoy got sacked six times, three of them from Josh Uche, and threw an interception soon after Hopkins fumbled the ball. The Patriots offense was not that inspiring either, especially without two of their starting running backs or one of their wide receivers, but they at least took advantage of all of the mistakes Arizona kept making. New England won the game 27-13, not the prettiest double-digit victory, yet something worthwhile to keep their playoff window open.
The Patriots unfortunately missed the playoffs that season with an 8-9 record, which was shocking considering the amount of flaws and weaknesses that they had, but it could have been worse. The Cardinals, on the other hand, never recovered. That Monday night loss against New England was just part of a seven game losing streak to close out the year 4-13, ultimately costing Kliff Kingsbury his job.
Main Image: Michael Chow/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK
