The Cardinals defense prepares for the playoffs without its best player

Danny Kelly: It was just last week that we were talking about Tyrann Mathieu as one of the favorites for Defensive Player of the Year, and now he’s been lost for the season with another ACL tear. It’s clearly a huge loss for the Cardinals -- he is one of their best players and is a game changer from a number of different spots in the defense -- but it’s something that they’re going to have to overcome.

Because he played so many roles for Arizona, how do you think they will adapt? He was part corner, part safety, part nickelback, and part linebacker -- so do you think they’ll try to use someone else to emulate what he can do, or does replacing the Honey Badger mean Arizona will have to turn to a number of different guys to play individual roles in different situations? If you had to predict it now, what do you think they’ll do?

Stephen White: Honey Badger’s greatest asset, as you alluded to, is his versatility. Because he can do so many different things well it doesn’t much matter what kind of personnel the opposing offense uses. They can almost always match up well, whether dropping him in the box against multiple tight end sets or having him cover one of the opposing team’s best wide receivers in the slot vs. an empty set. If you want to send pressure, he’s a great blitzer. If you want to sit back, he can also play the deep middle with his speed and elite-level ball skills.

That doesn’t mean the Cardinals never substituted to matchup better when opposing offenses changed up personnel, but it does mean they never actually had to do it. That all changes with Mathieu out.

I don’t believe that the Cardinals, or most teams for that matter, have a guy waiting in the wings with the kind of overall skills that Mathieu possesses, which are necessary to try to duplicate his role in the defense. Clearly the Cardinals were pretty stacked at safety already with Rashad Johnson and Tony Jefferson joining Honey Badger back there, plus a guy like D.J. Swearinger who was recently picked up by the Cardinals after having been released by the Buccaneers. What I would expect is that the Cardinals will now do a lot more substituting to make sure they matchup well with opposing offenses and also maximize the various skill sets of the players set to try to fill in for Mathieu over the next few weeks.

Will that work? I have no idea. Ultimately we all just kind of have to wait and see. I do know that this is a huge blow to a defense which had been playing pretty well of late, even as their offense overwhelmingly garnered most of the attention. I still see the Cardinals as one of the teams to beat in the NFC as we get closer and closer to the playoffs, but I’d be lying if I said I thought for sure they would win their first postseason game this year.

Where do you think Arizona will miss Honey Badger the most; against the run or back in coverage?

Danny: Well, first off, agree with your assessment on what the Cardinals are likely to do in his absence. It’s really rare to find “five-tool” guys like Mathieu and even rarer to have two of them, so the Cardinals will make do with a combination of some of their depth guys to play each of the different roles Honey Badger brings to the table.

To answer your question, I think it’s going to hurt them more in the back-end coverage part of the game. Like you said, he has an uncanny ability to matchup with both tight ends and receivers, and his ability to diagnose and jump plays makes him extremely dangerous. It seems like he’s constantly breaking up passes, breaking on quick routes and tackling them quickly, or sniffing out screens to blow them up before they start. Additionally, he’s a really great blitzer, so Arizona may have to do some different things without him out there. Blitzing is one of those underrated skills that some guys just seem to be good at. Timing, explosiveness and aggressiveness go into that, and Mathieu has all that.

Additionally, Mathieu is one of those guys that the Cardinals could trust in the back end when they send any of their multitudes of zone or all-out blitzes. When you blitz, it’s always a little more dangerous downfield because you’re asking your guys to cover deep, many times in man, so Arizona may have to shift what they’re doing in that respect.

Will they continue to blitz as much? Will they have to alter the way they blitz? It will be interesting.