The Arizona Cardinals are my new favorite football team. It’s a little late to be climbing aboard their bandwagon, but the NFL playoff field has been reduced to four, and I need to root for somebody.
The Eagles? Philadelphia has celebrated enough lately — the Phillies won the World Series — and, besides, the Eagles advancing to the NFC championship is as inevitable an event as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano.
The Steelers? No way. Three years ago, I spent a week in Detroit with 40,000 Pittsburgh fans that took over the hotel lobby, drained all the downtown restaurants of food and all the downtown taverns of beer, and then took over Ford Field on Super Bowl Sunday.
The Ravens? Please.
That leaves the Cardinals, both the world’s oldest continuously operated pro football franchise and the world’s least distinguished pro football franchise. Although they haven’t appeared in a championship game since 1948, their six-decade string of futility isn’t romanticized. When David Letterman cracks wise about the Cubs or the Lions, the audience gets it: Unlucky for life, ho-ho, hee-hee.
Born in Chicago and relocated to St. Louis before settling down in metropolitan Phoenix, the Arizona Cardinals have been unlucky nearly as long as David Letterman has been alive. But some teams – the Atlanta Thrashers and Memphis Grizzlies and Washington Nationals – are not monologue material.
Yet here we are, on the cusp of the conference finals, and the Cardinals are 60 minutes removed from ending 60 years of irrelevance. They’re home. They’re hot. And unless peerless receiver Larry Fitzgerald breaks both thumbs while moving a grand piano down a spiral staircase, they’re going to the Super Bowl.
When coach Ken Whisenhunt hoists the Halas Trophy in six days, when he thanks the Bidwill family for its commitment and the rest of the front office for its vision and the coaching staff for its work ethic and the team for daring to defy all the cynics, I hope he remembers to also thank Deon Grant.
Arizona was in a seemingly irreversible funk when it faced the Seahawks in the regular-season finale. After essentially clinching the division with a 26-20 victory at Qwest Field on Nov. 16, the Cardinals — novices at this sort of thing — set their cruise control at 45 mph.
The Giants beat them at home. The Eagles embarrassed them at Philadelphia on Thanksgiving night. Their tailspin continued two weeks later with a 35-14 defeat at the hands of the Vikings, which preceded a 47-7 thumping at New England.
The Cardinals, whose 8-7 record was good enough to clinch a sorry NFC West, were heading toward the postseason with the label of Worst Playoff Team Ever.
Then came the Seahawks, broken and battered and emotionally spent after coach Mike Holmgren’s memorable farewell in a hail of snowballs in Seattle. How fired up were Arizona fans about the possibility of watching the Cardinals apply a symbolic dagger to the defending division champions?
Not very. The NFL had to waive its blackout rules on televising home games that fail to sell out — actually, it had to waive them twice — before enough tickets were distributed to ensure the contest was seen in Phoenix.
Anyway, back to Deon Grant. During a third-quarter Cardinals drive, with Arizona leading 28-21, Warner threw a pass that Grant could’ve picked off for an 85-yard touchdown return. The ball was his, the lane to the end zone was empty.
If Grant intercepts Warner’s pass, the score suddenly is 28-28, and the Cardinals are wondering if they’re not, well, The Worst Playoff Team Ever.
Except Grant dropped the ball. No 85-yard return for a no-sweat touchdown. No tie game. No fans booing Warner. Arizona salvaged a field goal out of the possession, extended its lead to 10 points, and was on its way to a convincing win that enabled the Cards to hit the ground running in the playoffs.
It’s all about momentum. The 2007 Giants, with a postseason berth secured, gave unbeaten New England an unanticipated scare last year in Game 16. Resisting the temptation to play his starters sparingly, coach Tom Coughlin went pedal-to-the-floor, and though the Giants lost, their valiant performance was a source of self-esteem.
You know what happened in the rematch.
Arizona was similarly invigorated against Seattle. Instead of stumbling toward the finish line at 8-8, losers of five of their last six, they went 9-7, concluding the regular season with an assertive statement. It’s all about momentum.
As for the Seahawks, they’re off the radar screen these days. But if the Arizona Cardinals win the NFC championship, nothing about their improbable transformation will be more crucial than the interception Grant had in his hands, with 85 yards of daylight in front of him.
Some Hawks fans might wince at the prospect of an NFC West foe occupying the national spotlight, but I’d rather be positive.
The Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl? Think of it as a collaboration. They don’t survive in the playoffs without the booster shot of adrenaline they got from beating the Seahawks.
(Contact John McGrath at john.mcgraththenewstribune.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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