As Ken Whisenhunt becomes no longer a rookie Coach what can the birds look forward to?  The outlook looks great for many reason beyond my explanation that I talk about in this Post.

-Hes done his dues.  This guy was once a TE for Georgia Tech, and was drafted in the 12th round by the Atlanta Falcons in 1985.  He graduated from Georgia Tech with a Civil Engineering degree; that speaks volumes about how smart this guy is.  In the NFL he played for Atlanta, Washington, and the Jets, he was know mostly for his blocking skills. After that he retired after 9 years in the NFL and started his coaching career.

-Coaching career.  His first job was with Vanderbilt as a special teams and TE coach.  Returned back to the NFL in 1997 with the Ravens as a TE coach then bounced around with the Browns and Jets before landing with the Steelers in 2001 as a TE coach.  He developed Mark Bruener and Jay Riemersma into good run blocking TE;  if you are a Steeler fan like myself, those two TE were older and no much was expected of them, however Whisenhunt did a phenomenal job.  Finally, Coach Coward gave him the chance to take over the offense and take over he did.

-Great Steeler OC.  He is most known for his trick play in the superbowl WR pass.  But those who followed the Steelers know this guy developed Big Ben just nicely.  Never putting to much pressure on him when he was a rookie and the team still went 15-1, one of the best records in a season history, and Whisenhunt was a huge part of that; by allowing Ben to get his experience needed as well as still winning football games. Also if you forgot, steelers won that superbowl so he has a ring on his finger.  He brings much needed experience and winning attitude to the birds.

-First year as a Cardinals coach was impressive.  He took a team who was 5-11 in 2006 to a respectable 8-8 last year. His line can easily become one of the best in 2008, drafting levi Brown was a god send but developing him with Russ Grimm is a bigger god send than that Cardinals realize.  Bring Russ Grimm to the Cardinals was one of the smartest things Whisenhunt could have done. Not only did he bring Russ Grimm to the birds but he brought a handful of players from the Steelers to bring a winning attitude to the locker room.  I believe that a lot of the Cardinals failure in the past had to do with the attitude they have in the locker room.  They went from not expecting much to where winning is no longer an option it is a Must.

I know there are many other reasons why Whisenhunt is going to direct this team in the right directions but those I posted above I feel are most important.  The Cardinals will be expected to win this year maybe not with all the people in the media but surly in the locker room and among the team winning should become a habit very soon.  A lot of that hangs on how the QB situation will unfold.  But if we base it on Whisenhunt history, the QB situation will unfold nicely this year and they will no longer be the losers of the NFC west and will be fighting for a playoff spot.  They have the talent in the skills postions as well as in the trenches so expecting a playoff berth and a winning season in 2008 is not out of the question, not even close.  So get fired up Cardinals nation this is the year that is long overdue.   

If you're ready to jump in and make your own comments and/or stories it's easy to get an account with Revenge of the Birds. It takes less than a minute and all you need is an email account. Don't worry though, we're not going to fill up your in box with spam or worthless dribble. Your information is safe and your e-mail address is only viewable if you chose it to be.

So create an account and jump into the conversation.

This is your area to post anything that you feel like discussing. If something about the draft, offseason, or 2008 schedule/season is bugging you, just put your thoughts together in a Fanpost. The sky is the limit, you can make them as tricked up as you want with editing, formating, or even add a poll.  If you have any questions about how to add a picture or video feel free to contact me anytime. So feel free to express your thoughts to the group. Every piece of content that members can provide to Revenge of the Birds just makes the site that much more enjoyable and entertaining.

Hey Revenge Of The Birds,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Revenge Of The Birds from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Revenge Of The Birds and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Revenge Of The Birds now has all the basic information about the Arizona Cardinals and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Arizona Cardinals material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

-------

There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.