Cardinals’ OC wins chess match of attrition over Nick Bosa, 49ers

It wasn’t just another big play made by 49ers All-Pro Nick Bosa. Arizona had just intercepted Brock Purdy, giving the Cardinals possession at San Francisco’s 25-yard line early in the second half. On second-and-10, Arizona offensive coordinator Drew Petzing called a shovel pass to tight end Trey McBride.

Bosa set the edge and blew up the play, helping to hold Arizona to a field goal that cut the San Francisco lead to 23-13 with 10 minutes remaining in the third quarter. But Petzing and the Cardinals had Bosa right where they wanted him.

“Drew Petzing did something in this game that I think is just phenomenal coaching,” said analyst Doug Franz on the Doug Franz Unplugged podcast.

With the Cardinals’ defense on the field, Arizona’s offensive coordinator looked at his tablet and saw James Conner averaging only 2.0 yards per carry.

“And because of the heat, and because of the things they were seeing, Drew Petzing decides to tell the offense, ‘We’re going to ride the run game the rest of the way.’ There are so many offensive coordinators that have their head so far up their butt that they want the world to talk about them.”

Franz said Kyler Murray’s shovel pass to McBride, even though Bosa shut it down, was an excellent call because it slowed down Bosa, who also intercepted Murray earlier in the game on a screen pass. And that’s when Petzing – trusting his offensive line — embraced a deadly combination of short Murray passes and methodical Conner carries to outlast Bosa and the 49ers.

And after an extraordinary effort from Arizona’s defense – which shut out the 49ers in the second half – the Cardinals got the ball back with 2:52 left in the third quarter. From that point on, the Cardinals averaged 6.6 yards per carry, including 72 yards on 12 attempts (6.0 avg.) from Conner and a par of carries for 20 yards from Murray.

Conner even punched in a key two-point conversion after Murray found tight end Elijah Higgins on a 2-yard touchdown pass early in the fourth quarter, cutting the 49ers’ lead to 23-21 with 11:25 remaining.

“The game is 60 minutes,” said Conner afterward. “We believed, coming into halftime after they got the touchdown off the blocked field goal, things can still go your way. That’s why you just keep swinging and you fight for 60 minutes.”

Toward the end of those 60 minutes, when Cardinals linebacker Mack Wilson recovered a Jordan Mason fumble at Arizona’s 9-yard line, Petzing still believed in his running game. Conner answered on what he called a “mindset drive,” rushing for four first downs on the deciding march, and Murray’s fourth-down completion to Marvin Harrison forced the 49ers to take their timeouts after the two-minute warning, just before Chad Ryland connected on the game-winning 35-yard field goal.

Now ahead of the 49ers in the standings with a head-to-head win, the Cardinals (2-3) travel to Green Bay (3-2), where a win could give Arizona a share of first place in the NFC West.