Cardinals Paid Price of Mistakes in Loss to Super Bowl Champs

GLENDALE -- The Arizona Cardinals fell to the Kansas City Chiefs in 38-10 fashion to wrap up their second of three preseason games on Saturday night.

The Minnesota Vikings await next week for a handful of joint practices before their preseason finale next Saturday at 10:00 AM Arizona time.

Though the game just ended, the Cardinals will look to quickly move on to the Vikings after Kansas City easily handled them in all three phases throughout the night.

"We got to get cleaned up or that's what's gonna happen against a good football team - you're gonna get beat pretty good," Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon said following the loss.

"It'll be very black and white to our guys what we need to improve in a hurry, and we have to improve that going to Minnesota for those practices and the game so we can be a little more competitive."

The Chiefs tallied over 500 net yards compared to Arizona's 286. KC's average yards of gain (8.7) was nearly double of Arizona's (4.4). All four of Kansas City's quarterbacks combined to go 31/38 for 393 yards and three passing touchdowns with another ran in on the ground.

Gannon said the explosive plays is what was most disappointing from his team's performance.

"Honestly, the explosives [explosive plays]. I think that - whatever it was they had over 300 yards in explosives. I think they had eight or nine explosives, you're not going to beat anybody like that. That's one of our core principles of defense. So truthfully, that's what I'm most displeased about," said Gannon postgame.

After an impressive and mostly clean display of football last week against Denver, the Cardinals were penalized eight times for 82 yards.

"I don't think it's lack of focus or lack of discipline, it's lack of technique. When you play with bad technique, you get penalized, and that's what happened," said Gannon.

"You have to obviously get that corrected knowing that they kind of go in waves a little bit and sometimes that's how the crew's calling it but we got to play within the rules and typically when you get penalized, it's for bad technique."

Such is life when you're facing the Super Bowl champs, though Gannon is more focused on improving his own team before chalking the loss up to Mahomes magic.

"Yeah, it's a good football team. It's a good football team," said Gannon with a chuckle.

"But every team in the NFL is a good football team and if you don't play the type of ball that you need to play in all three phases versus anybody, you will get beat - and so we got to make sure that we give ourselves a chance to win."