There's a reason why the Cardinals are the worst franchise in the history of North American sports – an organization that has won a truly friggin' comical two playoff games in 86 long years of alleged professional football.
If ever a team needs to be bulldozed, ground into desert sand and then forgotten like dust in the wind, it's this one. The case for razing Arizona was on display under bright lights last night, in its truly surreal 24-23 loss to Chicago on Monday Night Football.
It was supposed to be the national coming-out party for the Bears, a team that rolled all over its first five opponents by a combined score of 156-36 and that was already writing its tickets to Miami.
Instead, it turned into a classic battle of who wanted it less, and no franchise has ever wanted to win less than the itinerant Cardinals, who sucked in Chicago (1920-59; 11 winning seasons), sucked in St. Louis (1960-87; 12 winning seasons), sucked in Phoenix (1988-2005; one winning season) and this year, for the first time, are sucking in a brand-new stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Normally, passing out drunk in the second quarter is a reasonable way to spend your Monday nights. In this case, you would have missed a truly unbelievable game. Here are the lowlights for Arizona – followed by the highlights for Chicago – as the team that has made losing an art form turned in a virtuoso performance:
- Arizona held a 20-point lead late in the third quarter – and lost.
- Arizona forced Rex Grossman into six turnovers – and lost. We're trying to prove this, but it may be the first time in NFL history that a quarterback committed six turnovers and still won the game.
- Arizona held the league's No. 1 scoring offense to three points – and lost.
- Arizona kicker Neil Rackers – a guy who set an NFL record last year with 40 field goals – missed two, including a 40-yard potential game winner in the final minute. The league's top kicker has now missed two do-or-die kicks in the last two weeks (and somewhere, Mike Vanderjagt is smiling).
- Arizona running back Edgerrin James set some sort of record for futility when he recorded the most carries (36) for the fewest yards (55) in league history (according to ESPN). Which begets the question: Why did Arizona hand the ball 36 times to a guy who averaged just 1.5 yards per carry?
- Arizona defensive tackle Darnell Docket returned a fourth-quarter interception 73 yards for a touchdown – only to have it reversed on a Chicago challenge. The Cardinals offense then went three-and-out.
- Arizona allegedly became the first team in NFL history to blow double-digit fourth-quarter leads in back-to-back games, according to the NFL Network.
The Bears, meanwhile, set a number of unusual marks in this most unusual of games:
- Safety Mike Brown returned a fumble 3 yards for a score to become the first player in NFL history who has returned at least three fumbles and four interceptions for TDs.
- The Bears tied a franchise record with two fumble returns for TDs (Charles Tillman had the other one Monday night). They've done it just twice in the previous 86 seasons. The undefeated 1942 Bears (11-0) returned two for touchdowns in a victory over the Eagles. Chicago's "Dippy" Evans returned two fumbles for TDs in a 1948 win over Washington. He's the only player in NFL history to return two fumbles for scores in the same game. Both came in the first quarter.
- It was Chicago's biggest comeback in a game since 1960, according to the NFL Network.
- Grossman won a game in which he posted a 10.7 passer rating – the lowest rating by a winning quarterback this season and one of the lowest in recent history.
Even the broadcast booth had a surreal flavor to it, with former NBA great Charles Barkley spending much of the first half as a guest announcer. He proved a pigskin prophet at the end of the half, as Arizona recovered a Grossman fumble at the Chicago 32 with 2:10 to play.
"When you got momentum and you're playing at home, you gotta go for the jugular," said the former Round Mound of Rebound.
Arizona did not. Instead, they took their foot off the neck of a suffocating team and gave it something Arizona can ill-afford to offer its opponents: a chance.
The Cardinals played the next series so conservatively that we thought Billy Graham was calling the plays: two short pass plays that netted 22 yards and a pair of dive plays by James, each of which went for no gain.
That was it. The Cardinals had a chance to go for the kill, but instead, they
nursed Chicago back to health. They ran just four plays, let the entire final two minutes of the half run off the clock and settled for a 28-yard field goal and a 20-0 halftime lead.
It wasn't enough, of course.
It never is with the Cardinals.
Coach Dennis Green continues to draw praise in many circles as a "great" NFL coach, which is what NFL Network host Marshall Faulk called him following the game.
But he's now just 12-26 with the Cardinals, the franchise where careers and hopes and dreams go to die.
He was 6-10 in 2004. He was 5-11 in 2005. And now, at 1-5, he's on pace to win just three games here in 2006.
Despite the offseason hype, the arrival of Edgerrin James and Matt Leinart, the nifty touchdown twins in Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald, and the shiny new stadium, it's just the same old Cardinals.
Chicago, meanwhile, has that "team of destiny" feel to it following this victory and the five routs that preceded it. But not every team will let the Bears up off the canvas once they get them down.
No team is as ever as generous as the Cardinals. In fact, letting opponents off the hook is an 86-year tradition that the organization continues to embrace.
