Arizona Cardinals - 2007

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Come to Think of It...
By BRS Editor, Jeff Gollin

A direct rip-off (borne of genuine admiration) of the concept behind the late Jimmy Cannon's excellent column, " Nobody Asked Me, But...". We plan to make this a weekly feature.

Wednesday October 10, 2007

  • We were surprised (and disappointed) by the amount of venom in the blogosphere directed at Matt Leinart after his collarbone injury. Makes us wonder whether either (a) this is unique to sports fans in the Valley or (b) the bloggers were merely fans of other NFL teams seeking to make trouble by visiting Cardinals sites. Whatever the case - chortling over another person's injury (regardless of who they play for) is uncalled for and a sick symptom of our society.

  • By contrast, witness the behavior of the folks in the stands in St. Louis who gave Kurt Warner a standing "O." Fans in that city have always shown class - as baseball Cardinal fans or Ram fans.

  • A few reasons why Kurt Warner may be having a better year than he has recently: (1) The gloves give him a better grip - therefore fewer botched snaps and fumbles. (2) No matter what they say - it takes a couple of years to get your reflexes back after a concussion. (3) The Cardinal offensive line is giving him more time to get set and make  his throws.

  • Just when we breathe a sigh of relief that we won't have to be inundated with the endless bombardment of Mets and Yankees World Series hype in the local NYC media, back come the Dallas Cowboys (aka "Team Felon") with an unbelievable come-from-behind win over the Bills - which means SIRIUS NFL Radio will continue to move toward an "All Dallas All the Time" format. (There is a silver lining, though - all those Chiefs and Lions truckers with nothing else to do but call in to the show will no doubt be squeezed out).

  • As it turns out, ESPN and NFL Network have also gone overboard with coverage of the Dallas win.

  • Everybody go to NFL Network and vote for Rod Hood (who's up for "Defensive Player of the Week"). Actually, I believe the best Cardinal defensive player of Week 5 was none other than #58 (Karlos Dansby) who had 14 unassisted tackles and one assist. Back to Hood: What was most impressive was that, in the 1st half, Tory Holt had just about dismembered him, but Rod bounced back in the second half to pick off two passes (one a game-flipper) and broke up at least a couple of others. The old cliche about "short memories" definitely applies here.

  • We're not sure we know what we'll be getting with Tim Rattay (and won't truly know unless we get to see him in action). All we can gather is that he's relatively young (at 30) and has a pretty good arm. The one rap on him when he was with the Niners is similar to the rap you hear about Alex Smith (i.e. pretty green, deer in the headlines etc.) It  will be interesting to see how Tim performs once he has time to absorb the Cardinal playbook and get back up to speed on his pre and post-snap reads. Until then, Kurt Warner should feel good knowing thousands of Cardinal fans are wishing him "good health" every minute of every day.