The Arizona Cardinals improved to 2-0 with a 27-22 victory over the Carolina Panthers. While it has to feel nice for fans that the Cardinals have taken care of business, we’ve now seen them take their foot completely off the gas pedal two weeks in a row, to the point of needing a goal-line stand in the closing seconds against the New Orleans Saints, and a fourth-down stop against the Panthers on a potential game-winning drive. It’s an incredibly frustrating development for a team that has playoff aspirations, so let's take a full look at the mess that was week two.

The Cardinals came out with impressive intensity on defense, forcing two turnovers on Carolina’s first two drives of the day, both thanks to awesome pressure designs by Jonathan Gannon and Nick Rallis. The first was a stunt that freed up Josh Sweat for a sack on Carolina QB Bryce Young, causing a fumble and a defensive touchdown.

The second was a blitz that saw Akeem Davis-Gaither run through untouched and hit Young’s arm just in time to cause the ball to lollipop into the air, right into the arms of Baron Browning. Those turnovers turned into ten points for Arizona, giving them an immediate leg up.

The Panthers attempted to establish a run game even while facing the early deficit, but the Cardinals' run defense limited Chuba Hubbard and co. to just 2.6 yards per carry, and Arizona ended the first half allowing only three points.

The second half was almost entirely soft zone coverage and four-man rushes for Arizona, which is where the concerns start to mount. The Cardinals' secondary allowed for too many easy access throws to be completed, while it's one thing to give up checkdowns in the flat playing so far off, Arizona routinely gave up chunks of 7-10 yards on the sideline and failed to cover Chuba Hubbard on a swing route in the red zone.

The defensive staff effectively abandoned the pressure packages that got them their lead in the first place, and it shed light on just how disappointing this pass rush has been through two weeks. Josh Sweat deserves omission for being the most impactful defender in the league on an EPA basis. EPA is simply tracking an individual player's impact on the game based on how many points they saved for a defense or gained for an offense.

Calais Campbell also turned back the clock in the fourth quarter, with two sacks on Carolina’s attempted game-winning drive, but overall, this pass rush is lacking return on investment, and the stats back it up. The interior of the defensive line seems to be where the problems lie, especially with Dante Stills and Darius Robinson.

Both had PFF pass rush grades under 60.0, and in Robinson's case, he didn’t win a single pass rush rep out of the 33 he was on the field for. It’s only year two for Robinson, and he barely played last year, but numbers like that are frankly unacceptable, and if they continue, he needs to see a reduction in snaps.

Whether it’s the coaching staff having too much trust in defensive line investments or a schematic discomfort with blitzing, the Cardinals absolutely cannot continue to rank dead last in the NFL in blitz rate, especially while they wait for the debut of Walter Nolen, because the Panthers went on drives of 14, 14 and 12 plays in the second half, and you aren’t going to beat good teams with this conservative style.

The offense isn’t free of blame for what unfolded on Sunday either. It’s now been multiple weeks of lackluster results in the run game for Arizona, with James Conner and Trey Benson combining for 48 yards on 14 carries, a measly 3.4 per touch, and Conner’s day could have been much worse had he not produced 24 of those yards

after contact.

The stats reflect what was shown on TV, as the offensive line struggled to generate any push up front, with only two starters having blocking grades over 60.0. Isaiah Adams is the big issue at right guard, with a 41.2 run blocking grade through two weeks, and it’s uncertain if the ground game will be able to get up and running with him routinely losing at the point of attack.

Despite these issues, the offense was still able to put up 20 points in the first half and open the second half with a touchdown, but Cardinals' QB Kyler Murray’s brutal interception in the red zone ended a drive that could have sealed things.

It also appears that Marvin Harrison Jr. is still going to be a week-to-week mystery for this offense, after what was a very strong opening game in week one. The chemistry shared by Trey McBride and Murray means he will almost always be the offense's first read, but this is a league where good teams have wideouts that routinely get the football, and five targets for a player you took fourth overall a year ago is nonsense.

Harrison Jr. needs to be used underneath and over the middle more. He has real speed that doesn’t need to be isolated on pure go routes, and the fade routes in the red zone have to stop. The appeal is understandable, but it’s already a low percentage throw, and Harrison Jr. just doesn’t seem to have a rhythm with Murray on them.

One final point about the offense is that they aren’t able to bleed the clock and get a first down late in the game. The sample is small, but in both games so far, Arizona has gotten the ball in a scenario where a first down or two seals it, and they’ve run 6 total plays while wasting a whopping one minute and 27 seconds.

Against New Orleans, the Cardinals received the ball leading by seven with 2:35 to play, meaning a first down ended the game, and they ran three plays that resulted in a loss of nine yards and punted.

Against Carolina, they received the ball leading by 12 with 5:01 to play, a scenario where any first down would shrink an already small win percentage for Carolina to almost nothing, so Arizona runs the ball twice for four yards, then Murray and Michael Wilson aren’t on the same page on a throw that would have been extremely low percentage if they had been, meaning Carolina got the ball back 34 seconds later.

Again, it’s fantastic that Arizona has played well enough in spurts to be undefeated so far, but second-half adjustments have to be made on both sides of the ball with upcoming divisional games against the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks.