Cards Attempting to End 61 Year Drought

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by Digger

Way to go Arizona Cardinals!

Baseball's Chicago Cubs are the current leaders is years between Championships in all of sports. 100 years since the Cubs last won a title.

Second on the list of underachievers of all time is the Cardinals franchise... 61 years. Can the Cardinals end their drought? Not many gave these guys any sort of chance to play in Super Bowl XLIII. Not with New York, Carolina, Philadelphia and Atlanta as foes. Kurt Warner & Co. shocked everyone, including the Philadelphia Eagles yesterday in the closing minutes to win their 1st NFC Championship 32-25.

(Franchise year by year results)

The Cardinals were born as a Chicago franchise in 1920, moved to St. Louis in 1960 before settling moving to Arizona in 1988. One of the most startling stats is over the course of 88 years, Cardinals teams have won 10 or more games a measley 5 times. 1976, 32 years ago as the St. Louis Cardinals, was the last 10 game victory season.

It's amazing to watch how some franchises just can't get it straight. In Arizona's case, it wasn't from a lack of trying. Multiple GM's had selected what appeared to be excellent players via draft. Until recently, many didn't pan out, got hurt, traded or in personal trouble. Nothing seemed to gel. Head coaches have come and gone.

For the 2008 Cardinals... all the chips fell into place at the right time. NFC West teams imploded right out of the starting gate. Seattle was expected to challenge and ended up playing ugly football (4-12). Rams (2-14) are in distress. SF (7-9) didn't wake up until Mike Singletary took over as head coach. Basically, it was an easy first half of the season for rookie Head Coach Ken Whisenhunt. The skeptics were quick to point out Arizona's failures when they went flat down the stretch... and never gave them a shot of winning any of three Playoff games.

Now, it's onto Super Bowl XLII to play the NFL's top team, Pittsburgh Steelers. Contrasting styles to the extreme. Pittsburgh plays defense first football but can be very explosive at times on offense. Cardinals rely on Kurt Warner's right arm. It should be a great game. I'll tackle this game deeper next week.

Arizona's nucleus is set for the short term. It would be great to see the Cards become a legit Playoff contender over the next few years. Time will tell. As for now, I'm curious to what kind of offensive play strategy Whisenhunt devises for Super Sunday? They derailed an aggressive Eagles defense early on building a big first half lead. Looks like we're in store for a great finale to the 2008 NFL season.