Cardinals Send Packers "Packing"

It was a good weekend here in the Valley. Colder than I like, but still warmer than a lot of the places I’ve lived. But good because the NFL Cardinals beat the Green Bay Packers, beat them up pretty badly, 38-8, and sent them “packing” back to their Wisconsin roots, shut the mouths of all those green and gold Packers fans who now reside in Arizona but maintain a feverish allegiance to their past-life Packers. Also, maybe now the rest of the country will finally acknowledge that the Cardinals are the best team in the NFL. And if they can stay healthy, they may even win that elusive Super Bowl. I’ve been on the wrong end of too many Super Bowls, rooting so hard for the poor Buffalo Bills in their four-in-a-row trips to the big game in the 1990’s, losing that first heartbreaker to the Giants when “Wide-Right” Scott Norwood couldn’t make a 37-yard field goal on the last play of the game, then losing the next year to the Redskins, and then the next two to the detestable Dallas Cowboys. Oh, the heartbreaks! And then in the 2008 season, the Cardinals “coulda, woulda, shoulda” beat the Steelers in that agonizing Super Bowl defeat that was even more painful than the four losses for the Bills. More painful because they beat the Steelers every way but in the final score, instead of at least a field goal to end the first half it was an interception by James Harrison and an improbable hundred-yard runback along the sidelines with no one able to knock him down or out of bounds. Thus, at the end of the first half, it was 17–7 for the Steelers instead of a 10-10 tie. And that final blow on a play with only 35 seconds left in the game, Cardinals leading 23-20, the catch in the end zone by Santonio Holmes with one toe within half an inch of being out of bounds to score the game winner with only 29 seconds left in the game, giving the Steelers a 27-23 win. Take away those seven points for the first half interception, and the score would have been a Cardinals 23-20 win. Oh, the pain of it all. But maybe this Cardinals team can make up for the suffering by winning this, the 50th Super Bowl.