Bruce Arians hoodwinked us.
Arizona's charismatic coach insisted last week that the Cardinalswould play to win in the regular-season finale, regardless of the strong likelihood that they were locked into the NFC's No. 2 seed.
Outplayed in every facet of the game versus the Seahawks, Arians' players didn't seem to get the message.
Perhaps it was because the coaching staff didn't believe it themselves.
Arians admitted Monday afternoon, per Darren Urban of the team's official website, that the plan since last Monday was to pull Carson Palmer at halftime and ease other starters out of the game.
When reporters asked if he simply lied about his plans, Arians replied, "Of course!"
If Arians' open-faced honesty about his penchant for dishonesty sounds familiar, it's because he answered, "I lie pretty good" when asked why he selected Logan Thomas after vowing not to draft a quarterback in 2014.
Arians' reputation as a straight shooter certainly helps.
In NFL Network's Bruce Arians: A Football Life, the peripatetic coach is quoted as saying, "I don't have to please anybody. I'm going to do whatever the hell I want now from here on out."
Arians didn't get his first NFL head coaching job until he was 60 years old. In other words, he's playing with house money.
As Arians' close friend Chuck Pagano knows all too well: "They can fire you but they can't eat you."
So what to make of Arizona's letdown in an outlier performance entering the playoffs?
The Cardinals' veteran leaders are using phrases like "it's a week-to-week league" and "more can be learned from losses than wins."
Arians suggested it was just what the doctor ordered for an over-confident team in need of a corrective measure while riding high on a nine-game winning streak.
"This was a valuable lesson today because you could see it coming all week," Arians said of the 36-6 drubbing. "Coaches, players, all of them fell into that reading-the-press-clippings thing and anointed Super Bowl champs. This was a nice wakeup call."
