With the “Air Raid” making its appearance in the desert, NFL bettors are buying into the Arizona Cardinals marching a competent unit onto the gridiron every passing week. One of the main contributors to benefit from this change in offensive ideology is sure to be David Johnson who more or less played shackled under the previous clueless coaching staff. You can bet your bottom dollar at online sportsbooks Kliff Kingsbury won’t have the best player on his offense locked down, but instead will look to showcase him every chance he gets. Johnson has failed to live up to his breakout 2016 campaign when he was one of the best overall running backs in the game. Though his offensive line still ranks out amongst the worst the league has to offer, Johnson is sure to get his in an offense that simply won’t ever take its foot off the gas pedal.
Total Rushing Yards: 1000.5
Offensive Philosophy
The Cardinals ranked out as one of the worst teams in the league to rush the pigskin. Only the Bengals and Lions proved to be worse. Arizona simply had no shot of running the ball or had to abandon it prematurely due to the offensive line stinking out loud and the team falling behind early in numerous games. Because of it, the Cardinals only went on to run the football 39.4 percent of the time (No. 20) and was forced to look to air over 60 percent of the time (No. 13). It remains to be seen if there will be any improvement on the defensive side of the ball, but it certainly doesn’t look that way heading into the regular season; especially with Patrick Peterson suspended for the first six games.
Entering the year with Pro Football Focus’s No. 30 ranked offensive line won’t do Johnson any favors either. With that, it’s certainly in the realm of possibility that he does most of his damage out of the backfield catching passes than chewing up yards behind a leaky front wall. If so, you might want to take a look at his rushing+receiving yards prop that currently checks in at 1600.5 at offshore sportsbooks.
Arizona Cardinals Football Schedule
Week 1: Lions
Week 2: @Ravens
Week 3: Panthers
Week 4: Seahawks
Week 5: @Bengals
Week 6: Falcons
Week 7: @Giants
Week 8: @Saints
Week 9: 49ers
Week 10: @Buccaneers
Week 11: @49ers
Week 12: Bye Week
Week 13: Rams
Week 14: Steelers
Week 15: Browns
Week 16: @Seahawks
Week 17: @Rams
Schedule Breakdown
The jury is still out as to just how dominating the Baltimore Ravens will be against the run with so many defections from last year’s unit. Carolina at home won’t be a walk in the park either. But once those two games conclude, the sea will start to part for Johnson and his ability to take advantage of it will go a long way in determining if he’s ready and capable to surpass the 1K yardage barrier for only the second time in his career.
Matchups against the Seahawks, Bengals, Falcons and Giants will go a long way in deciding it with those four teams lined up from Week 4-8. Each of them ranked out below average in defending the run a season ago, and each has major question marks entering this season.
Going by last year’s defensive stats, the Cardinals will oppose three rock solid run defenses with the Saints being the last of them. From Week 9 on, Arizona’s opposition ranked No. 15 or higher defending running backs with the Steelers the only team to buck the trend (No. 9). In all, the schedule strength checks in at No. 24 overall which should give Johnson ample opportunities to cash over tickets at offshore sportsbooks.
The Bet
I’m not prepared to go all in on Johnson just yet though I do believe there will be some drastic improvement made on his part. With Kingsbury now at the helm, how could it not? In Johnson’s breakout second season, he ran for over 1,200 yards and reeled in 80 passes for another 879. To show just how idiotic the coaching staff was last season, he was only targeted a grand total of 76 times which led to 50 catches and 446 yards.
Kyler Murray figures to be under duress a ton which means Johnson is likely to be his most productive playmaker with the amount of dump-offs and screens likely to come his way. With that, it’s likely Johnson excels more as a pass catcher than rusher in the inaugural season of the new offense.
Would it shock me if Johnson went on to rush for over 1,000 yards? Not in the least. However, I’m going to pay up and force him to prove me wrong at top rated sportsbooks since I got a feeling NFC West defenses as whole will be much improved – save for Arizona’s!
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