Love Misses a Second Straight Game. The Backfield Arizona Drafted Him to Fix Remains Unfixed.

Jeremiyah Love is out again Sunday, his ankle still not right, which makes it two consecutive absences for the No. 3 overall pick and two consecutive weeks that the running back room looks exactly as it did before Arizona spent a top-three pick to repair it.

Love has been on the field for six games this season and has shown enough — 303 rushing yards and a touchdown — to justify the investment in theory. But the ankle has been a recurring problem, and the Cardinals have now had to game-plan around his absence more than once. Tyler Allgeier carries the load again, with Bam Knight available behind him. That is a functional backfield for a team that is not 2-4 and 1.5 games out of a playoff spot with 11 games left. For this team, it is a problem that compounds everything else.

The broader context hasn't changed since I wrote about this after Week 6: the Cardinals entered this season having produced a fraction of what a functional backfield should generate, and Love was the answer to that. He still might be, eventually. But "eventually" is a harder sell when you're losing by nearly nine points a game and the calendar is moving.

Denver comes to town Sunday. The Cardinals won last week. The ankle will either be ready in the coming weeks or it won't, and that timeline is now the most important variable in Arizona's remaining playoff math.