Who says preseason games don’t count?

Adrian Wilson interrupted my question. Not with his own question, but with a directive. A direct order aimed at rookie Jamell Fleming:

“Bus #1. That bag right there goes to Bus #1,” Wilson said as he pointed to his luggage and then Fleming in the visiting locker room at Arrowhead Stadium.

So, take two. I started again with my question, only to be cut off again.

“Whoa..hold up,” the five-time Pro Bowler barked at a rookie defensive back (who I honestly didn’t recognize in street clothes). “These bags go to Bus #1 too.”

Okay, now? Yes, I finally had AW’s attention. Time to pose my question about how many conclusions we can draw, if any, about the Cards defense after a couple of underwhelming (alarming?) preseason games where teams annually run vanilla schemes and do not game plan, etc.

“Don’t assume the assumption,” said A-Dub.

“Uh, come again?” I asked, while half-expecting to be assigned my own bag to carry.

So Wilson repeated himself: “Don’t assume the assumption.” Then, he stated that any sort of explanation he did offer wouldn’t count anyway, because nothing in the preseason matters, even sound bites.

Gotcha. And, from experience, I think we all agree. At least, there was no argument offered from Paulie Preseason. But! What happens when the head coach states emphatically that “There is no playtime this week. When they get it right…maybe they’ll come out (of the game).”

All of a sudden, preseason games do count, right? Don’t believe it? Just ask another Cards captain on defense.

“For him to have to come to us and say that is very disappointing on our team,” Darnell Dockett explained after practice. “We have to do a better job at taking care of our coach because he takes care of us.”

For the Cards’ sake, let’s hope their defensive woes are akin to my recent car problems. (Note: this preseason, there have been two kinds of people in Flagstaff – those who have given my car a jump start and those who have not.)

Throughout Cards Camp, my car has had a problem starting. Ask my wife and her response has been – “time to trade ‘er in for a new ride.”

Well, guess what? Don’t assume the assumption. Turns out, it was a minor mechanical issue that repeatedly resulted in a dead battery (Note: Can I take a moment to thank the dude who invented jumper cables.)

Thankfully, I don’t need a new car. Just a jump start. Maybe, just maybe, when you consider the way they finished last season, the same is in store for the Cardinals defense? #Foreshadowing(?)

“The two games that we put on film was just so disappointing, it’s not the way the Cardinals play,” Dockett admitted. “Like I said, I guarantee we will not play like that this week. I promise you we won’t.”

Put it this way, if the upcoming game film isn’t better than the film Coach W saw (Bourne Legacy) during the annual team trek to the movies, we’ll let him borrow our jumper cables.

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