Lu Ke returned from injury, and the San Francisco 49ers won strongly!

In the fifth week of the regular season, the strong matchup of "Lu Ke VS Watt" did not reach the expected popularity, and the San Francisco 49ers burst out with amazing energy from the players to the fans, dominating the game with a devastating attitude, although Watt has done his best, but after all, he has not been able to change the course of the game.

The Houston Texans, who have fought fiercely to the last minute in the past four games, have ushered in a total collapse in this game, and have been sliding since the opening of the new season, but I don't know if this will be the beginning of the team's total collapse; The San Francisco 49ers, who had barely resisted in the previous three consecutive defeats, have recovered in all directions with a new look and finally stopped the continuous decline, and it is now uncertain whether this will be a turning point for the defending champions' strong recovery.

For the Houston Texans, the season is still not over.

And for the San Francisco 49ers, the crisis has not been completely resolved.

The season has just begun, and anything is possible!

In the sixth week of the regular season, the San Francisco 49ers will take to Candlestick Court for the second week in a row to face their arch-rivals Arizona Cardinals, a game that the team can't afford to lose.

San Francisco 49 currently has a zero-win, two-loss record, and after consecutive losses to the Seattle Seahawks and St. Louis Rams, San Francisco has now been left behind by their rivals in the same division, in stark contrast to the glory of the past two seasons. Now against the Arizona Cardinals, it is interesting to note that the Cardinals have been the only team to have lost to the 49ers in the past two seasons, and as fate would have it, the 49ers must now break the winless streak in the division this season from the Cardinals, and this game will be even more crucial.

In fact, the Arizona Cardinals are no longer the soft persimmons of the 2011 season.

Last season, the team started with a four-game winning streak and showed their overall improvement on both the offensive and defensive ends, uniting their opponents in the same division to build the Western Division of the National League into the league's No. 1 Devil Division; But then they suffered a serious quarterback injury crisis and then went all the way down, winning just one of their remaining 12 games, ending the season with a 5-11 record.

This season, the Arizona Cardinals have also embarked on a sweeping overhaul, firing head coach Ken-hisenhunt and then poaching last season's league head coach Bruce-Arians.

Sixty-one-year-old Bruce Arians is a veteran coach, who began his coaching career in 1975 and was mainly responsible for the offensive team, successively serving as a coach in various positions such as wide receiver, quarterback, and close end, and stayed with the Pittsburgh Steelers from 2004 to 2011, following the team to the Super Bowl twice.

In 2012, Arians moved to the Indianapolis Colts as an offensive coach, tweaking/coaching the offensive team led by rookie quarterback Andrew Lacker, and in October, head coach Chuck-Pagano, who had just joined the team this season, was diagnosed with cancer, and Arians was appointed interim head coach and led the team to a nine-three-loss record.

One season ago he was the league's vice president, and one season later he returned to the playoffs, which was the largest counterattack in the league history in two seasons between two seasons; At the same time, he has nine wins as interim head coach, which is also the most in the history of the league. At the end of the regular season, Arians defeated Jim Hubble, who created the myth of an undefeated season, to win the title of best head coach in the league.

In the offseason, Pagano, who returned from a fight over cancer, took over the Indianapolis Colts again, while Arians moved to the Arizona Cardinals.

One of the first things Arians did when he took charge of the Cardinals was to solve the quarterback problem that had plagued the team for years, and since there were no rookie quarterbacks worth picking on in the draft, he set his sights on the free agent market.

Carson Palmer eventually became the new helmsman of the Arizona Cardinals.

The quarterback is a 2002 Heisman Award winner, joined the Cincinnati Tigers as a first-round pick in 2003, was the league touchdown leader in 2005, and was named to the Pro Bowl in 2005 and 2006. Meanwhile, his alma mater, the University of Southern California, retired his No. 3 jersey.

But in the following seasons, the Cincinnati Tigers had a very, very poor team record, and in 2010 they hit rock bottom, finishing with a 4-12 record. Palmer asked to be traded, seeking a more competitive team; But the Tigers rejected Palmer's request, which led to a bitter clash between the players and the team, which ended in a tear of the skin.

In the 2011 draft, the Cincinnati Tigers selected Andy Dalton in the second round, and then the team announced that they would not trade Palmer and did not expect Palmer to return to the court, which would be tantamount to putting Palmer in the cold.

Palmer refused to sit still.

During the offseason, Palmer began to try out around the league looking for teams willing to take over him, and that's when Palmer and Lu Ke met — they both showed up at the 49ers' tryout camp in San Francisco, and Jim Hubble was very, very close to choosing Palmer as Colin Kaepernick's mentor, but ended up choosing Lu Ke.

Later, Palmer still did not find a team, so he had no choice but to return to Arizona, but he was not able to return to the starting lineup.

During the regular season of the 2011 season, when the San Francisco 49ers met the Cincinnati Tigers, the quarterback opposite Lu Ke was Dalton, not Palmer; It wasn't until October that the Oakland Raiders, who were in desperate need of a quarterback due to a temporary quarterback injury, finally convinced the Tigers to bring Palmer back to the Bay Area.

After two tepid seasons in Auckland, Palmer joined the Cardinals this year.

Although Lu Ke and Palmer are not mortal enemies or old enemies, the two quarterbacks from the traditional rivals of UCLA and USC respectively, their fates are quietly entangled, and after entering the league, it seems that there is always a head-to-head matchup waiting for them, but it has never been able to be staged.

From the unexpected encounter in the original trial camp, he missed the opportunity to face off the Cincinnati Tigers and the Oakland Raiders, and now he has come full circle, and the official battle between Lu Ke and Palmer has finally arrived, and it is still as a sworn enemy in the same district, as if it is back in the 2011 offseason, both players are fighting for survival, and there is no room for loss.

For the first time, Lu Ke had the last laugh as a nobody; So, what about this time?

The conversation returned to the Arizona Cardinals, after Arians identified the quarterback, the overall pattern of the team was determined, and then began to supplement the team around Palmer, first filling an important position in the defensive group through the draft, and an important addition to the offensive line; Then he traded for five-time Pro Bowl defensive end John Abrahan, who was joined by the Atlanta Falcons and was a standout performer in the Nations League final at the start of the year.

Compared to the offensive group, Arians has spent more time on the defensive group to ensure that the team can show more potential in tough battles.

In the preseason, the Arizona Cardinals achieved three wins and one loss, including a clean sheet against the Denver Broncos and a narrow victory over the Green Bay Packers, which initially showed the team's ability to fight in hard battles, which also made people look forward to the team's new season.

Sure enough, after the start of the new season, the Arizona Cardinals showed good form, losing to the St. Louis Rams and New Orleans Saints respectively, and defeated the Detroit Lions and Tampa Bay Buccaneers successively, and they showed their great potential in the run-in process of running in the new season.

In the fifth week of the regular season, after a home win over the Carolina Panthers, the Arizona Cardinals currently have a record of three wins and two losses, the same record as the St. Louis Rams, but because of the win-loss relationship between them, they are still temporarily third in the division. Incidentally, the Seattle Seahawks, who started with a four-game winning streak, lost to the Indianapolis Colts this week and currently lead the National League West with four wins and one loss.

Because the season has just begun, the gap between wins and losses has not been completely widened, and the victory or defeat of a division internal war can overturn the entire ranking, which also means that the clash between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals is becoming more and more important.

Now the Arizona Cardinals do have the ability to disrupt the situation in the Western Division of the League of Nations:

The offensive group ranked 13th in the league, and the passing offense ranked among the top 10, but unfortunately, the ground offensive ability was only 23rd, which seriously dragged it down; The defensive group ranks 10th in the league, the ground defense currently ranks first in the league for the time being, and the pass defense is 14th in the league.

It can be clearly perceived that under the leadership of head coach Arians, the passing attack has advanced by leaps and bounds, and the all-round rise of the defensive group has made the team have more tenacity in the collision of strong and strong, and can have more confrontation capital and winning opportunities at critical moments.

Objectively speaking, although the Houston Texans were the playoff team last season, and the Arizona Cardinals have not entered the playoffs for three consecutive seasons, in terms of strength and state this season, the Arizona Cardinals are superior, coupled with the atmosphere of sworn enemies in the same region, which also makes this game full of more suspense.

From industry analysts and commentators to fans of the two teams, the general view is that this is a severe test for Lu Ke, especially the ground defense ability of the Cardinals, who are currently at the top of the league for the time being, are much tougher than the Texans-

Once the Cardinals cut off the ground support of the running back, Lu Ke's passing ability is bound to be under more pressure; If he still can't get his passing accuracy back in time, and he can't make sure to complete the pass just by relying on his mental layout, then the game will be very, very difficult.

So, has Lu Ke really fully recovered?