MVN - Most Valuable Network

Cardinals vs Seahawks. Once again, no chance.

After my now infamous call last week outlining all the reasons why the Cardinals had no chance against the Browns, only to see the birds pull out a totally improbably win, i’ve decided in the interest of the team to once again lay out the reasons why they have no chance to win this week against the Seahawks. Apparently it has some strange karmic effect on the team and causes balls too bounce in their direction and superior opponents to make game killing mistakes. So, with out further delay all the obvious reasons why the Arizona Cardinals have no chance against Seattle this weekend:

1.  The Cardinals are hobbled in key positions by injury and don’t have the quality depth to stay with a healthy Seattle team. Lets look at this weeks injury report, Anquan Boldin likely out, Fitzgerald questionable, Adrian Wilson out, Eric Green out, Bert Berry out. Four All Pro’s gone or out and the best cover corner out as well. Not exactly a recipe for success on a team that is notoriously thin at crucial positions.

2. Seattle’s defensive secondary is substantially upgraded, negating the Cardinals passing game. Factor in using 3rd, 4th and 5th receivers against a much stronger secondary and you can pretty much figure the passing game is going to struggle.

3. Seattle’s linebackers do a great job stopping the run and the intermediate passing game to tight ends. Just check out Lofa Tatupu against Philly last week to see the problems he can cause. Granted, Feeley pretty much threw him the ball on two of them,  but the point is the Seattle defense is hitting it’s stride late in the year and generally doesn’t beat itself. The Cardinals don’t have the playmakers this week to compete and should get worn down.

4. Matt Hasselback is playing some of his best football of the last two years. Nuff said there. Cardinals decimated secondary, no pass rush and a good QB and you have a recipe for disaster.

5. The Seattle Seahawks have one of the NFL’s best clutch kickers and the Cardinals have  Neil Rackers. If it does come down to a close game and who can kick under pressure, does anyone in America think the Cardinals have the edge in this category?

6. Mike Holmgren’s teams rarely if ever beat themselves. The trademark of Seattle over the last few years is they don’t look pretty, they don’t over power teams but they have a solid plan, they are confident and they rarely beat themselves. This years stunning mistake where they gave the Cardinals the game in Phoenix as a result of a bad hand off  won’t be repeated in Seattle.

7. The Cardinals ALWAYS play poorly in Seattle. Always. Always. Always.

No chance this week my friends.  It doesn’t mean the Cardinals are done for the season as their next three games are very winnable but all the hype in the local Phoenix media about this being the biggest game in the last 10 years for the Cardinals is way over blown. The season will come down to the last three games and the Cards making a run at 9 wins, which would likely get them the wild card, but as for winning the division, you can’t lose to SF twice and have any chance.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 9:03 am and is filed under game analysis, Regular season, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.