Blog Posts For Tag: Cardinals

It seems fitting that Super Bowl XLIII came down to the final minutes of the fourth quarter. The best games build tension until the final minutes when a few memorable drives define whole careers. This season’s 27-23 victory by the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Arizona Cardinals will go down in history as one of the best in history. It had two momentum changing drives in the final three minutes and a safety to boot.

Super Bowl!!! After this incredible season in which the chi of the year was changed with the injury of Tom Brady, the NFL season has come down to a game between the 14-4 Pittsburgh Steelers dominating defense and the 12-7 Arizona Cardinals tremendous passing attack. To end it all, I have a few predictions to make.

Does great offense trump great defense? Anybody in Chicago who watched Michael Jordan terrorize the league’s best perimeter defenders every night would say so. Anyone who has watched Alex Rodriguez win intense battles at the plate for the New York Yankees against Cy Young winners would say so. Anybody who remembers the smooth skating of Wayne Gretzky would say so. So, in this upcoming Super Bowl will the explosive Cardinals offense be able to overcome the dominating Steelers defense?

Now that the only high seeded team left is the Pittsburgh Steelers I think it is official that all bets are off. Say what you will about the Steelers defense, the offense has been inconsistent and the playoffs, especially the conference championship, is no time to test your defenses ability to carry a game.

The experts are dumbfounded and I am looking back at most post Friday and wondering how I could have been so blind. Surely, everybody in the Carolinas and Tennessee assumed they were going to have another week to find NFL Playoff tickets. Three of the four favored teams lost this weekend. The Ravens started out by surprising the Titans 13-10, then Cardinals embarrassed the Panthers 33-13, and the upsets were capped off by the Eagles delivering the emotional defeat of the New York Giants 23-11. Only the Pittsburgh Steelers were able to take advantage of home field advantage in a 35-24 win over the San Diego Chargers that was much more one-sided than the score reveals.

After four weeks of meaningless preseason games and 17 weeks of football that twisted and turned, beginning with an injury that cost the Patriots NFL Playoff tickets and gave every team a chance to fill the void in the Super Bowl, the wild card round of the postseason finally began.