Cardinals strike gold with K Chad Ryland: The rose of the accurate kicker.

While much of the focus on Arizona Cardinals kicker Chad Ryland has been with his three late-game winning field goals, a case could be made that a nearly just as important kick was the 57-yarder that cut the Miami lead to 13-10 on the first possession of the second half last Sunday.

The first play of the quarter was a 37-yard pass play to tight end Trey McBride that moved the ball to the Miami 33-yard line. However, a 10-yard loss by running back James Conner and a holding penalty on left tackle Paris Johnson Jr. pushed the Cardinals back to their own 47 facing second-and-30.

What followed were two conservative plays of nine yards on a pass to Conner and a 6-yarder to McBride, setting the stage for the longest attempt of Ryland’s career. He did make 51- and 56-yard kicks last season with the Patriots, but his previous long attempt with the Cardinals was a 45-yarder blocked and returned for a touchdown by the 49ers.

Head coach Jonathan Gannon had confidence Ryland could connect from that distance.

I know he can hit the long ones (from) what he does in practice,” said Gannon, who then expounded on the two previous plays.

He said, I thought two plays that’ll go overlooked: second-and-forever, get it third-and-forever, then get it back to kind of the line that we felt good about at that point in time with where the wind was. It was kind of right there and we sent them out there and he booted it through.

Those were a huge three points right there. I dislike going backwards, but to get a productive play on second down and a productive play on third down to where you don’t have to punt there, that was huge.

Special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers said, “You want to see practice translate to games. You guys aren’t out there when we’re kicking field goals, but leg strength is a non-issue with him. To be able to see it translate in a game is good. I’ve said it before, I’m thinking about the kicker, the holder, the snapper, the protection, all of those things that go into that one single play and there are a lot of moving parts. But at the end of the day, once it gets to him, he’s got to put it through.