With more than a month to go before Training Camp opens, the Arizona Cardinals continue to receive an outpouring of love and hype in the wake of their Super Bowl run last season.
It does not seem to make a difference who is doing the measuring, but the LA Clippers of the NFL have become one of the league’s most dangerous teams. One expert says the Cards have more Super Bowl ready players on their roster than anyone else in their division. Another has Arizona leading the way with total players in his top 99.
Even the alleged question marks seem to have been answered.
What about a defense in transition with a new cooridantor and five new starters? More hype abounds here as the new cornerback tandem is touted an upgrade from last year, and the team defense is one year further along and better equipped in its ongoing transition with the 3-4 set. What if Anquan Bolden mopes around with his contractual status up in the air? No worries, the Cards have a playmaker ready to bust out a la Steve Breaston last season in Early Doucet. What about the specter of an aging Kurt Warner falling victim to the injury bug? That meme has been exorcised in light of Warner’s third longest active streak of consecutive starts.
Clearly, the Cards are headed back to the Super Bowl. Book it.
Not so fast my friends. Before investing, be it emotionally or financially, in the Cardinals this season, you might want to dust off the NFL record books first. History suggests the Cardinals wont even have as good a record this year as last, let alone make another hard charge into the Big Game.
THE CURSE OF THE SUPER BOWL LOSER: THE GORY, BLOODY NUMBERS
Of the the last 15 Super Bowl runners-up, 14 of them won fewer games the following season. Only one club in this span, the 2000 Tennessee Titans, managed to even equal the win total of their Super Bowl run. Super Bowl losers have lost a combined 64 more games the following season, for an average of 4.3 additional losses in the follow up year. That figure is on the uptick. The last eight seasons have seen a full five extra losses in the hangover season than during the club’s Super Bowl run the previous season. None of these eight teams dropped less than three more games.
The Cardinals won nine games last season, so if history holds, Arizona will regress and not even have a winning record in 2009.
If you’re looking for a financial chance and trust history, you should find a way to get action down on the Over/Under for the total regular season wins for the Arizona Cardinals. That game has been set at 8.5. In order to go over the total, the Cardinals need to at least equal their win total from last season, a feat only one of the last 15 Super Bowl runners-up have managed to accomplish.
In one of the weaker divisions in football, it’s difficult seeing the talented, up-and-coming Cardinals taking a step back. But how do you overlook all that recent history?
CAN CARDS CHANNEL THEIR INNER BUFFALO?
Speaking of the word history, it should be noted why the selection of just the last 15 Super Bowl losers. In the sports world, 15 years of evidence usually gives us a a good idea of whether or not an outcome is more trend than fad.
Beyond that, a legitmate practical reason existed to make this the cut off. The first season of this chronology marked the formal end of the Buffalo Bill’s AFC Dynasty. After making the Super Bowl four times in a row, the Bills collapsed in 1994 to a losing record. Their feat of getting so close, losing each time in the title game, yet digging deep enough and being strong enough to make it all the way back again was an amazing sporting accomplishment, despite their Super Bowl woes in that time.
The Bills success is more outlier than anything else over the last generation of the league, but their run was so long that any inclusion would tilt the numbers to an extreme. In 1997, you might have a had time making the case with a lot of numbers for these Super Bowl hangovers, but in 2009, it’s pretty clear: A Super Bowl loser had better be a current day incarnation of the Buffalo Bills, or they’re heading for some bad times.
With the Warner to Fiztgerald connection, Arizona can be every bit as dangerous as the Bills through the air. But there’s nobody on this team that resembles the kind of player and impact Thurman Thomas had from the tailback position on the Bills.
The Bills were great to dominant along the lines. The Cardinals appear to be, at best, above average in those departments. The offensive line is young and performed well last season. It was also remarkably durable and cohesive all season with no missed starts among the bunch. Can you dodge the injury big so perfectly two years in a row?
The defensive front has some nice indivdual talent and is more than capable of rushing the passer, but its seems too undersized to be anything but average in stopping the run. I think they’re susecptible up the middle at nose guard to be reliable stoppers in the traditional 3-4 set. Quality 3-4 defenses usually have an active space filler at nose tackle disrupting the middle of the line on virtually every down. I dont think that’s a tool the Cardinals have. When you’re relying on the perpetually underachieving Gabe Watson, who is coming off his second career knee injury in the off season, or 2007 draft pick Alan Branch who has yet to make much of a pro impact, you are vulnerable up the middle.
DOMINANT AGAINST DIVISION, A MESS AGAINST THE REST
Of course, they do not need to repeat anything the Bills of the early 1990s did to go over the oddsmakers win projection. A repeat of last year’s nine victories would do it, regardless if they bow out early in the Super Bowl chase. The Cards field the talent and look to be clear favorites in their division. They ran the table against the NFC West last season and are a strong 16-8 against those teams in the last four seasons.
Despite their glossy record over their closest rivals, is the gap between the franchises really that wide? The Seahawks are healthy, a bit retooled and more focused under a new coach than last season and are bent on proving last season’s fall as a one-year abberration. The 49ers look better than the Cardinals on defense and were one goalline conversation away last season from actually equalling the eventual NFC Champions in the standings. Those games this season wont be pushovers for the Cardinals who will traverse a season for the first time in franchise history with a target on their backs. They would probably be favored to have another winning division record.
The doubter, however, would rightly point out the Cards needed every bit of their 6-0 NFC West run to achieve nine wins last season. Arizona went 3-7 in the regular season against the rest on the NFL, including an 0-5 road record and five contests overall where they gave up more than 34 points. As it turned out, it was a pretty tough non-divisional slate with only one team ending with a losing record, five eventual playoff participants and a full trip through the rugged NFC East.
With a first place schedule for the first time in team history, this year’s non-divisional slate should logically be as tough. That schedule includes home games with Indianapolis, Houston, Carolina, Minnesota and Green Bay and road games at Jacksonville, New York Giants, Chicago, Tennessee and Detroit. Thats just three teams with losing records from last season, including five teams from last year’s postseason and a total of eight playoffs appearances among this crowd the last two years.
AN EARLY 2009 PROJECTION
Let’s give Arizona a 5-1 divisional record, a generous compromise between the perfect mark from last season and the 4-2, 3-3, 4-2 sequence they had been on the three previous seasons heading into 2008. They could go 4-6 in their other games, a one game improvement from last season, and would equal last year’s mark and go over the lined win total.
The Cards might struggle equalling last year’s 2-2 AFC mark as they face the South, a division that’s top-to-bottom more formidable than the 2008 AFC East they faced last season. On the other hand, they should do better on their NFC North tour than they did on their 1-3 stretch through the NFC East last year. They went 0-3 in the regular season against the other NFC division winners last year, the Giants, Vikings and Panthers and have rematches with all three this season with Minnesota and Carolina visiting the desert.
There are challenges, but a small improvement from last season in non-divsional games, coupled with another round of dominance within the division will pave the way for Arizona to buck the history of Super Bowl losers and at least repeat last year’s regular season success.
In order for history to repeat, it’s imperative that division rivals St. Louis, San Fransico and Seattle improve and provide more resistance. The 49ers and Seahawks in particular need to win at least once over the Cardinals making those road games in the Pacific Northwest and by the Bay during weeks 6 and 14 respectively major swing results in this game. If the Cards slip more than once in division play, then Arizona would need at least a 67-percent jump in production over the rest of their slate to go over the 8.5 win mark.
My advice would be not to play anything right now. Keep a watchful eye on NFC West training camps. If those teams look improved, then consider taking a chance that history holds up its end of the bargain.
jamiemac not just GAMBLER, but also DEGENERATE. no sugarcoat.
A comment.
I heard Warner had his knees surgically reconstructed with Viton. Should be good to go for 25-30 more years.
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Shitty Layout by the by..not enough flags and weather streams, and twitts, you need twits and CILs!
Now we are E_Bloggie Blod Bruders!
NFL players are too old to attract my interest.
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Do they have a buffet?
Me so horny.
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Can we get a link to the comments at the bottom of the post as well? That'd be nifty.