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The Arizona Cardinals rarely get much love nationally and I don't think that I have ever seen in my lifetime, outside of local fans, predict that the Cards would be Super Bowl champs.
But a well known Philadelphia columnist from the Daily News, Paul Domowitch, has done the crazy thing and picked the Arizona Cardinals. Let that set in. He, a real national writer, picked the Arizona Cardinals as his Super Bowl champions over the Indianapolis Colts.
But I'm going to go with Arizona and Indianapolis. The Cardinals will become the first host team to qualify for the Super Bowl. They'll win the game, but the victory parade will be pushed back 2 weeks to give the retirees out there extra time to get to the parade route.
The Cardinals?
The Cardinals. They had the very same 10-6 record as the Eagles last year. They won seven of their last nine games, including a Week 16 win at Seattle. They have one of the league's top defenses. They finished seventh in points allowed, sixth in yards allowed, sixth in sacks, fifth in takeaways and first against the run. Carson Palmer's propensity for throwing interceptions lessened as the season went along and he became more familiar with Bruce Arians' offense. He averaged one every 20.3 pass attempts in the first eight games, one every 36 attempts in the last eight. Andre Ellington is a versatile running back who averaged 5.5 yards per carry and 9.5 yards per catch. Yes, the Cardinals.
The team has not been afraid to talk about the goal of playing the Super Bowl in their home stadium. That's already out there.
But to have someone outside Arizona pick them to win it all, especially since most aren't even confident they will be better than third place in the NFC West -- and rightfully so.
Is Domo nuts? Is he just making a crazy prediction for appearance only?
Do you buy it? After all, Carson Palmer has yet to win a playoff game in his career, and he is going to lead the team to a ring?
What do you think? Is this going to be the one outlier prediction, or will we start seeing a few more of these as the regular season approaches?
