Hightower: Kudos to Coach Whisenhunt for making the move to start Timmy the Ballista against the Rams. The Rams, I am sure, game planned for Edge and were caught off-guard by the pulling linemen and the speed of Hightower. Fool me once, shame on you! Now the 49’ers (and Seahawks, and Giants, and …) have film to study on Hightower AND Edge AND Arrington. The element of surprise is past and now it needs to be pure execution to “fool me twice, shame on me”.

James: Kudos to Edgerrin for being a pro about this. It had to be pretty obvious to him where the trends were going based solely on practice. He could have gone (more) public about this and tipped the opposition. He was also all smiles when the camera was on him during the game. Thank you Edge!

Rolle: Familiarity breeds confidence, confidence breeds success. Antrel had a pick for a TD last year against the Rams (diving catch in front of Holt with the wild, crazy return for a TD, took off his helmet for a 15 yard unsportmanlike penalty) and likely reviewed that game film to prepare for this week. Having watched last year’s game just before yesterday’s game (time change had me up EARLY), the Rolle that played yesterday looked very much like the Rolle we had so much for last year. Keep it up Antrel!

Warner: His sluggish start wasn’t his fault, it was the fault of his receivers who were all doing their best Bryant Johnson impersonations. Dropped pass. Dropped pass. Dropped pass. Breaston and Fitzgerald had two a piece. Boldin had one. JJ too. I was growling in frustration with the receivers until Rolle had that INT. Then it seemed like they all relaxed and played “their” games. Kurt certainly deserves to be mentioned in MVP conversations at this time. Aside from the gaudy numbers he’s been putting up, he’s done the things the coaches have told him to do (ball protection, yes, you have to hand off sometimes) and has made the players around him better. That’s the mark of an MVP.

Miscellaneous: Anyone remember what time it was in the game when Adrian Wilson caught his pass for seven yards? I want to look at that again. I must have been looking at the laptop at that moment. Anyone notice the guy in the stands with the #13 Iowa Barnstormers jersey?

As far as the game goes, here were a few thoughts:

1.) There was a lot of Ram/Cardinal helmet patting, and Cards players helping the Rams up off the turf throughout the game. Much more than I’ve seen in a Cardinals game in a long time. Now it didn’t bother me, because we were so far ahead, but I think the Cardinals let up significantly in the 4th quarter. There were a lot of stupid penalties at the end of the game, and I felt like some of the players were messing around by the end of the game (specifically DRC’s face after his suplex on the sideline—he thought it was hilarious). Anyway, as much as I like to see a loose team, I like to see a loose team that can focus for an entire game.

2.) Hightower played great today. It was really neat to see him run hard. I am still hesitant to name him the savior of the Cardinals’ running game, but I spent most of the game trying to figure out what really was the difference between him and Edge. The key for me is just how he makes people miss. On his 30 yard touchdown run, as soon as he hit the hole, he did the misdirection, choppy feet thing that made Fakhir Brown miss the tackle. I think Edge would have just run through Brown, and had a good gain of 5-6 yards, but that is why he doesn’t have very many 20+ yard runs this season. I have high hopes for the run game, and hope that Hightower can keep that up against a good team.

3.) Dirk Johnson has been solid and dependable. I take back everything I said about him in preseason.

All in all, I was happy with the game (my week is so much better with positive articles to read about), and hope that we can maintain it for the weeks to come!

You guys pretty much covered the good, although I will add that the O-line was more successful than usual at creating some holes for our backs (Hightower did find a lot of space on his own). They also did a good job protecting Warner, I didn’t see him hitting the turf close to as often as over the last couple games. How about the Defense shutting down the run game? Kudos!

Fact #1 – St. Louis is an obviously inferior team.

1. - A good team (i.e. Dallas?, Carolina) would have found a way to monopolize on our many, many careless plays and bone head mistakes and make this one of those nail biters determined by a Racker’s field goal (SCARY).

1. - At what point when you are being paid large sums of money to WIN at a game do you decide that a 20 point lead is sufficient and you can start celebrating, OR EVEN RELAX…JUST A LITTLE?

1. - In my opinion if this were a game against any type of threat. The opposing receivers would have caught a lot of those dropped passes that just should have been caught. The Urban TD would have been picked and taken back 25 yards. The opposing team would have had their share of possession, and penalties would have killed us.

I really did love this game. I was stressing out early, especially after Warner tried to do the QB sneak, should have tried Timmy again. I remember right before Rolle had the pick I was telling myself a pick for a TD would be nice and BAM! It happened. Couldnt believe I called it. There deff was a lot of good in the game. A lot of bad tho too. Duece is really starting to get on my nerves. This guy I think is leading the NFC West in penalties. Pathetic.

Really liked how Hightower played. Defense played mostly pretty good. Good game. Next week should be a good one too.