The Sports Xchange

Arizona quarterback Carson Palmer completed 29 of 45 passes for 421 yards in Sunday’s 25-13 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers but coach Bruce Arians didn’t think Palmer played well.

He threw only one touchdown pass and had two throws intercepted, one of which bounced off a receiver.

“Average to poor,” is how Arians rated it. “He made a lot of throws and we made a lot of catches, but we didn’t execute very well inside the 20-yard line.”

Palmer used various forms of the word “frustrated” four times to sum up his performance.

“I’m just frustrated, being here and having a chance to go down there and win the game at the end,” he said. “When you don’t win it, it’s obviously very frustrating. It’s one of those things where you can’t let it fester. We will look at it, move on. We have a lot of football to play.”

–Getting pressure on quarterbacks continues to be a problem for the Cardinals. They have eight sacks in six games. Last year, they averaged more than two a game.

“We just didn’t get to the quarterback, and he made some throws,” Arians said of Pittsburgh’s Landry Jones. “Give credit to Landry Jones. He came in and did a heck of a job for a young guy who has never played, but we didn’t knock him down either. We let him get comfortable, but he made the plays.”

NOTES: OLB Alex Okafor (left calf) is expected to miss two to three more weeks. … OLB Dwight Freeney participated in 19 plays in his first game with the team. Freeney applied decent pressure at times but didn’t register a statistic. … TE Darren Fells (left shoulder) is expected to miss two to three weeks with a sprain. … WR John Brown caught 10 passes for 196 yards, including gains of 45 and 42. But he didn’t score and he lost a fumble.