They fell on the shield

Cardinals' effort won't please NFL

FOXBOROUGH - Patriots fans surely will take it, but the NFL can't be pleased at what unfolded yesterday at Gillette Stadium.

Commissioner Roger Goodell often talks about the importance of the shield, meaning that he wants the NFL logo to stand for something special, but the Arizona Cardinals lifted their leg on it in a 47-7 loss to the Patriots. They played like dogs.

By the end of the third quarter, the Patriots had totaled 470 net yards. The Cardinals had 45.

So what in the good name of the NFL was going on here?

From the start, the Cardinals' approach was difficult to comprehend. They arrived from the toasty Arizona desert to the snowy, chilled confines of Gillette with one of the NFL's most lethal passing attacks, but also the league's worst running game.

So what did they do on eight of their first nine offensive plays? They ran it.

While some might have assumed the wintry conditions played a part in the Cardinals' unorthodox play-calling, the swirling winds and snowfall had nothing to do with it.

"We would have done that regardless of the weather," coach Ken Whisenhunt explained. "We wanted to work on our run game."

The Cardinals (8-7), who already clinched a playoff berth after winning the NFC West two weeks ago, got the work in and in the process buried themselves under an avalanche from which they couldn't recover. By the time they earned their initial first down, with 11:29 remaining in the second quarter, the Patriots had built a 21-0 lead. The game was over.

Quarterback Kurt Warner, who in two-plus quarters of action had a stat line to forget (6 of 18 for 30 yards), said he was embarrassed to have his name attached to such a performance.

Whisenhunt wondered if things might have been different if fullback Terrelle Smith's illegal-use-of-hands penalty didn't negate a first-down run on the team's second series, but he also acknowledged that the Cardinals "can't be that fragile of a team" to not recover from those setbacks.

It looked a lot like preseason football, from the Cardinals' uncharacteristic run-first start, to their unwillingness to tackle on defense in the second half. It was so bad that the best tackle of a Patriot all day came when linebacker Junior Seau was leveled by a fan on the sideline in the fourth quarter.

The Patriots must have known that the Cardinals wanted no part of a rugged, Northeast-based tussle because they opened the game with offensive lineman Russ Hochstein as a fullback, which was a clear statement they intended to run right through them. Hochstein ended up playing 33 snaps in the straight-ahead bulldozing performance.

Still, Cardinals players defended their effort, deflecting the suggestion that they left their desire back in the desert.

"I don't think it was a matter of guys not wanting to be here," veteran defensive end Bertrand Berry said. "Obviously it didn't go the way we wanted it to go, but that doesn't mean we weren't trying to win. To a man, nobody had that mentality going out."

While Whisenhunt pointed out that he had his team in full pads last Thursday, his personnel decisions didn't exactly reflect a go-for-broke approach as he rested two of his top players who have been ailing - receiver Anquan Boldin (shoulder) and running back J.J. Arrington (knee).

"It was a case of just being smart," Boldin explained after the game. "The most important thing right now is being healthy for the playoffs."

So no, NFL Films won't be requesting the highlights from this one, although league owners who are considering expanding the regular season to 17 or 18 games might be wise to take a long, hard look at what went down yesterday. Some owners see an expanded regular season as a chance to grow the revenue pie, but do they really think games like yesterday's - and the lackluster, uninspired performance delivered by a Cardinals team clearly looking ahead to the playoffs - are good for their product?

The answer is that they aren't, and that's why the hardest hit the Cardinals delivered yesterday wasn't on the football field.

It was to the NFL shield.

Mike Reiss can be reached at mreiss@globe.com.