Same Ankle. Same Answer. Allgeier and Knight Again.

Jeremiyah Love returned Sunday against Dallas and left the same way he's been leaving games all season — on that ankle. He went down in the Cowboys game with an injury to the same ankle that kept him out the previous two weeks and shadowed his availability going back to the preseason. The No. 3 overall pick has now played in six of eight games and accumulated 303 rushing yards and a touchdown, which is a reasonable number for a rookie splitting time through injury. It is not the number Arizona drafted him to produce.

So the Cardinals go back to Tyler Allgeier and Bam Knight, which is what they've been doing anyway. Allgeier has 195 rushing yards across all eight games; Knight has 175 in five. They've kept the offense functional, not explosive. The win over Dallas happened with this group available, which is worth noting — but one win against a divisional opponent does not reframe what this backfield is. It is a contingency plan that has become the plan.

The deeper issue is that Arizona burned its margin for error at this position months ago. James Conner is on injured reserve. Third-round pick Trey Benson was waived in August. The team leaned on Love to be the answer, and Love has spent most of the season being the question. With eight games left and two games out of the last wild-card spot, there is no cavalry coming at running back. Allgeier starts. Knight spells him. That's the depth chart.

Arizona is 3-5 and still alive, technically. But a team outscored by nearly eight points a game that just lost its featured back again for an unknown stretch is not a team with room to absorb another setback. The next few weeks will tell us whether Sunday's win was a turning point or just a good day before another bad one.