Cards/Bolts a look back, And we look ahead to NY/AZ matchup next week

San Diego

Last year the Arizona Cardinals missed out of the playoffs with a 10-6 record.  A big reason for that was a 27-24 loss to the St. Louis Rams in the first game of the season, their only win in the NFC West last year.  It was a game in which they were leading by 9 heading into the final quarter.

It is kind of fitting that the Cardinals were heading into the fourth quarter of game one this year losing 17-6.  Last year our team showed is maturity level by losing that first game, and this year we see the same maturity, but this time we can see the positive and never give up attitude that made our team so good over the last 9 games of last season.

A lot of people will say that we were "lucky" to win this game.  I look at it as San Diego was a playoff team last year. They improved over the off season. They are a good team that will probably be a playoff team again this year.  As it stands after the first week of the season, your Arizona Cardinals currently have the ninth-best passing attack and 17th-best rushing attack in the NFL.  We are 16th in stopping the pass and second in stopping the run.

These stats are comparable with what kind of production we got last year.  From a team that lost so much production and didn't have a huge pass rush almost all game that's not bad.  Also, i seem to remember many times last night Carson Palmer sitting back and having time to deliver a pass, hell on one play i remember thinking he has time to do his taxes back there.

Looking ahead to the New York "football" Giants

I look at NY as a game we should be able to win easily.  They looked really quite bad on Monday evening. They managed less than 200 yards total for the game and had 53 yards on 22 caries (2.0 average).  Eli looked average at best and was not on the same page all day with his receivers.

The line looked about as good as ours was in 2011 and 2012 this whole game and really I think the Giants played so poorly that it made Detroit look better than it really was.

That being said, this is the ultimate trap game.  Arizona is coming off a big win in which they didn't play up to their level but still won and NY is pissed off after looking like the craptastic team they are.  We have to travel to the east coast but I think we got that monkey off our back last year.  And looking ahead to the biggest game of this new NFL year home vs San Francisco that we gotta have if we want to by pass them up.

That being said im going with the fact that I see a mature team here.  and go Cards win 27-17... GO CARDS