Kyler Murray: 'We're just playing bad football. It's not winning football.'

That was bad football.

The Arizona Cardinals' 31-21 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday at State Farm Stadium had penalties, dropped passes and a fumble — and that was just the first half.

“Everybody’s got to evaluate themselves,” Arizona quarterback Kyler Murray said. “We understand what’s going on right now. We’re just playing bad football. It’s not winning football, and that’s the result you’re gonna get when you’re out there doing stuff like that.”

This game, by itself, was something that should have ended up on a follies and bloopers compilation that comes free with a subscription to your favorite weekly sports magazine.

There was a dropped interception, an interception that got called off on a penalty and two forward passes on one play!

“You’d like to see that be a lateral,” Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury said. “Unfortunately, it went forward. ... It just didn’t work out for us. Kind of a summary of the game. Little things that were close, but we just didn’t get it done.”

It was so bad that Marty McFly, Rick and Morty immediately jumped into a Hot Tub Time Machine and went back to 1987 to help Michael Jackson make a song about it. (Your butt is mine … sah-mon!)

I’m not saying this lightly. I’m quite likely the nation’s foremost expert on bad football.

I played on a small college team that went winless. I covered the Wilks-Rosen era. And I grew up rooting for the Lions.

I know the toll this kind of thing can take on a town’s psyche.

You have to watch from a safe distance, like when a moron has a pocketful of fireworks and too much free time.

You can’t get your hopes up too high. You have to just accept what you get.

For example, while it might be mathematically possible for the Cardinals to get to the playoffs, it wouldn’t be wise to delay any vacation plans for January.

Consider some of the amazing sequences of ineptitude that could all factor into the next remake of “The Longest Yard” or “The Replacements.”

The Cardinals scored their first first-quarter touchdown of the season, and the defense followed it up by forcing a Seahawks punt.

Arizona had a chance to go up 14-3, but instead went three-and-out when center Billy Price snapped a ball to the 5-10 Kyler Murray that would have been better suited for the 6-foot-7 Brock Osweiler.

Seattle took the ball, trailing 7-3, and marched down to scoring territory where Geno Smith threw a slant route that Arizona cornerback Byron Murphy jumped for a certain interception — except it bounced off his hands. Smith found DK Metcalf in the back of the end zone for a touchdown on the next play to set Seattle up for a 10-7 lead.

To review, a bad snap and a dropped interception combined to swing a potential 14-3 Arizona lead into an actual 10-7 Seattle advantage.

The next possession, Murray threw an inexplicable interception that was illegitimated by illegal contact. The Cardinals took that gift of a call and did something amazing with it: False starts on consecutive third-down snaps! On third-and-18, Murray threw a pass to James Conner that went for 6 yards. And then the Cardinals were flagged holding on the ensuing punt.

The next time Arizona had the ball, still trailing 10-7, there was a chance to score when DeAndre Hopkins got behind his defender, but Nuke ran a square in against man coverage with no safety over the top. He should have run a post, and Kyler Murray let him have it on the sidelines.

“I’m not going to go into detail,” Murray said, “but there was a miscommunication, right there.”

At the end of the first half, Arizona, still trailing 10-7, had the chance to take the lead and get the ball back to start the second half.

On third-and-4 with about 30 seconds left, Murray found Robbie Anderson in the middle of the field for what should have an easy completion to set up a field goal, at least. But Anderson was so wide open that the ball went right through his hands.

Then on fourth-and-4, Murray worked his magic, darting through the line for a first down and more, but he was carrying the ball low and outside, allowing safety Ryan Neal to hit it loose for a fumble.

I didn’t get much better in the second half.

The Cardinals scored a touchdown when Geno Smith threw a screen pass to Arizona linebacker Zaven Collins. It was such a shock that Collins had to catch it twice before darting to the end zone. Collins later got flagged for unnecessary roughness on third-and-12.

Then Tanner Vallejo got his hands on a tipped pass, but couldn’t haul in the interception. Seattle scored a touchdown on the next play.

Late in the fourth, trailing 24-21, Arizona allowed Seattle to drive 85 yards on five plays for a touchdown that put the game out of reach.

See what I mean? Any fan who had hope for a positive outcome would have been on an emotional rollercoaster, especially a fan harboring playoff hopes.

Better to observe casually, like watching a kid wash dishes. You just know something’s going to go wrong, so you aren’t too surprised when your favorite coffee mug needs a bucket of Krazy Glue.

Cardinals players and coaches have insisted this is a good team, but they’re not playing like it.

That was bad football.

Keep watching in case something good happens. Just don’t expect it.

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kyler Murray sums up problems: 'We're just playing bad football'