TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -Five weeks ago, the Arizona Cardinals went to Foxborough and were blown out 47-7 by New England, their fourth loss in five games.
The next day, coach Ken Whisenhunt promised things would change.
“I don’t think anyone is immune to that,” Whisenhunt said Sunday before sending his team out for a pads-on, no-holds-barred workout more common in training camp than after 15 regular-season games.
Things have changed for the Cardinals, marking the second straight time a late-season game with the Patriots sent a team on its way to the Super Bowl. Although it occurred in very different ways.
Last season, it was the New York Giants who used the Patriots as a stepping stone to the NFL’s title game, taking a then-unbeaten New England team down to the final seconds before losing 38-35 in the last game of the regular season.
confidence it could play with anyone. Five weeks later, the Giants handed New England its only loss, 17-14 in one of the biggest Super Bowl upsets ever.
Super Bowl week officially begins Monday with the arrival of the Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers. It also marks the third time in four seasons that at least one of the participants in pro football’s ultimate event is a team few people expected to see there.
The Steelers themselves set the stage three seasons ago for last year’s Giants and this year’s Cardinals with an improbable run of their own. They started 6-5, won five straight regular-season games to make the playoffs, then won three road playoff games before beating Seattle for the title.
But the Cardinals remain the most improbable of the Super Bowl surprises because the Steelers and Giants have successful pedigrees going back decades. Arizona has anything but – its only title of any kind was in 1947. This year, its NFC West title was its first division championship since it was in St. Louis in 1975.
finished 4-12.
The Cardinals cite that snowy debacle as their reawakening. Nobody else saw it that way.
In their first playoff game – their first home postseason game in 61 years – they were underdogs to wild-card Atlanta.
But they won that game 30-24, in the process restarting a running game that had been last in yards gained during the regular season. They followed that by upsetting Carolina on the road, their first win in the eastern time zone, then beat Philadelphia in the NFC championship game – again as a home underdog.
“I don’t know what clicked,” said Kurt Warner, whose passing provided almost all the offense during the regular season. “In the last few games we just found that we were having success. Now we’re running a little more and the guys up front have more confidence and the guys in back are getting more patient waiting for the line. Each week we gain more confidence and we can be a more-balanced football team.”
That the Cardinals are here has made this Super Bowl a curiosity from the start simply because Arizona – formerly of St. Louis and Chicago – is the NFL’s most historically challenged franchise, the last NFC team since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 to make it to the conference title game.
s have made it to the Super Bowl. Only the Giants, after the 2000 and 2007 seasons, have been there twice. Two that haven’t gone at all are Dallas and San Francisco, the dominant teams of the 1980s and 1990s.
The AFC totals are skewed by the success of New England, which won a title after the 2001, 2003 and 2004 seasons. Pittsburgh has now made it twice. Oakland, Baltimore and Indianapolis are the other teams to make it, although the Colts, like Philadelphia, which has been to five NFC title games, have been one of the league’s most consistently good teams.
Most football people attribute all this to the long-term effects of free agency and the salary cap, which took effect in 1993.
“It took a while but it’s here in full effect now,” said Colts president Bill Polian, who also built strong teams in Buffalo and Carolina. “From our standpoint, it means because we have to spend a large proportion of our money on offense, we don’t spend as much on defense. All teams have different ways to spend the money, but the ultimate outcome is that it leaves you short at some positions, especially if you have injuries.”
Sometimes those weaknesses can be covered in a short playoff season, as the Cardinals are doing now with their run game.
hed the 2006 season as one of the league’s worst teams against the run and were just the third-seeded team in the AFC after being No. 1 the year before. But the return of safety Bob Sanders from injury and the development of defensive tackle Anthony McFarland, picked up in a trade, turned that weakness into a strength in the postseason.
That may be what’s happened with Arizona. Edgerrin James, benched at midseason for rookie Tim Hightower, has returned to the form of his youth to help improve the running game and add balance to the offense.
That could make for another Super Bowl upset. Regardless, another surprise team has gotten here.
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