Thursday, January 22, 2009
Cardinals: Worst Super Bowl Team Ever
I'm as big a fan of the underdog as anyone.
I'm always rooting for the lowest remaining seed in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. When the Tampa Bay Rays make a run at a World Series title, I'm interested. When the lowly Atlanta Hawks take the Celtics to seven games in the first round of the playoffs, I'm loving every minute.
But the underdog thing has its limits.
Nobody wanted the 2007-08 Hawks to beat the Celtics in the playoffs last season because the 37-45 Hawks didn't really deserve to be in the playoffs. They were terrible in the regular season. The series was fun, but the right team won.
The Arizona Cardinals are like the 2007-08 Atlanta Hawks. Except in this case, the Hawks actually beat the Celtics.
The Cardinals are the worst team to ever make it to a Super Bowl. Ever. And it's not close.
I'm not taking anything away from what they've accomplished in the playoffs. They beat the teams they faced. They overcame the odds. The underdog won.
Whatever.
The Cardinals are like Dante from the Clerks movies, they shouldn't even be here today.
The Cardinals have been the picture of a dysfunctional franchise over the last couple of decades. They don't spend enough money. They let good players go. They sign players on the wrong side of their career. They don't draft well, with the noted exception of Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin.
They're like the warm-weather version of the Detroit Lions.
So did they turn over a new leaf? Did they turn this thing around? Did their new management figure out how to put together a Super Bowl champion?
In a word, no.
The Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl because they play in the worst division in the history of the NFL. The Cardinals went undefeated against NFC West opponents. Against everyone else, they went 3-7.
Even if you factor in their playoff wins, they're still 6-7 against the real NFL.
And yet they're in the Super Bowl.
The Cardinals scored one more point than they allowed in the regular season. They had one of the best offenses in the NFL, and they could only outscore their opponents by one measly point.
And that's while feasting on the NFC West.
There's no nice way to put this. The Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl because the National Football Conference suffered the worst choke job in the history of professional sports.
The entire conference should be ashamed of itself.
The Cardinals are only the second nine win team to make it to the Super Bowl. Statistically, they are the worst defensive team to ever make it to the Super Bowl. No Super Bowl team had ever scored less than 14 points more than they allowed — and that was the other nine-win team that inexplicably made it to the Super Bowl.
Well, 1979 Rams, you can rest easy, because you're no longer the worst team to ever play in the Super Bowl.
The Cardinals could shock the world on Super Bowl Sunday. They could beat the Steelers. They really could. Their offense is good enough that they can, in a perfect storm, beat anyone (unless there is a storm, see their performance against the Patriots in December).
Think about the teams we've considered the worst Super Bowl teams in recent memory. The 1985 Patriots won 11 games. The 2000 Giants won 10 games. The 1996 Patriots win 11 games. The 1989 and 1986 Broncos both won 11 games.
Even the 1994 Chargers won 11 games.
Those teams were terrible in the Super Bowl, but at least they deserved to be there. The Cardinals are a great story, I guess. But they don't deserve to be the story. The people who think they do just started watching them play three weeks ago.
I've had the misfortune of watching them all year long. The fact that they're in the Super Bowl isn't a great story, it's a travesty. Especially when you consider the fact that the Patriots, Jets, Cowboys, Bears, and Buccaneers, all either better than or at least equal to the Cardinals, didn't even make the playoffs.
The NFC is pathetic. The Giants' victory last year was a fluke. The entire conference is filled with choking dogs. Because of them, we're forced to watch one more week of Cardinal football.
Hopefully the Steelers will make the Cardinals pay for having the audacity to pretend to be a Super Bowl team.
Sean Crowe is the New England Patriots Examiner at Examiner.com. He writes a column every other Thursday for Sports Central. You can email him at [email protected].