Fond memories

All memories don't have to be amazingly memorable. As an Arizona Cardinals fan, I consider the Arians-Palmer era as a decent and fun one though they didn't win a championship or even make it to the Super Bowl. Cards are not quite the New England Patriots and given their checkered past, living through this era felt a lot better to me than it actually was. Cards have been to just 5 playoffs in 20 years and 6 in around 35 years. Arians-Palmer took us to 2 of those playoffs in the last 5 and had a losing season only once. So, we might as well call this era a dynasty of epic proportions and compare them to Hoodie and Brady. Life is all about context and perspective and this is practically a dynasty for the Cards fans. Both Arians and Palmer retired this week and that puts a nice wrap on this stretch. They also started together in the desert in 2013.

The high point of their combined run was obviously the 2015 season with a 13-3 regular season, a first round playoff bye, and a NFC championship game appearance. The highlight of that season and probably a top-5 moment in the history of the AZ Cardinals was the OT win against Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers in a classic playoff game. That Cards' season ended in Carolina in an embarrassing fashion for Palmer. You never know which Palmer showed up and the one in Carolina was definitely not the good one. They missed the playoffs the next 2 years. 2014 had a lot of potential too until Palmer got injured. Between his injuries and inconsistency, Palmer left a lot to be desired. Arians was up and down too with his coaching. But I will still miss them both. It was a mostly positive experience with these two at the helm and I thank them for the memories.

As for the here and now, the NFL playoffs are kicking off this weekend. Parity rules in the NFL and there is always a healthy dose of churn and surprises in the list of playoff teams every year. This year's entrants are no different and even more fascinating! Some real long playoff droughts are being terminated this weekend. The Bills are in the playoffs after a staggering 18-year break. I can't believe they have not made it since their loss in the music city miracle back in the day. Their last playoff appearance pre-dates iPhones and HD TVs. Even the QB they lost to in that game, Steve McNair, is unfortunately dead already. The bad news for the Bills is, they didn't really make it to the playoffs this year either. They pulled the ultimate back-door maneuver to sneak in. Of course the Bills' fans don't care and it's not their problem that the Baltimore Ravens collapsed and lost to let Buffalo in.

And here's the even worse news for the Bills. They probably have no shot against the Jaguars, who are ending a 10-year playoff drought. Thats saying something given that they will be playing against a Blake Bortels led Jaguars team. Of course, nobody will be surprised if the Bills do win and thats saying something about Blake himself. This is not going to be a made-for-TV matchup with a lot of excitement and star power. Hope it stays close so people have something to watch in this game. The other not-so-sexy matchup sends Titans to Kansas City. The Titans are ending a 9-year playoff drought. Come Monday, they will be ready to start another drought after the loss to the Chiefs. The NFC match-ups are a lot more interesting. The Saints-Panthers is the headliner. I like the Saints in this one, though Cam and the Panthers are no joke. The Falcons @ Rams will be a good one and probably the closest contest of the weekend.

The Rams are ending a long 13-year playoff drought themselves, but it feels much shorter because they are new to LA. So, LA doesn't care about the drought nor about the Rams in general for that matter, but there will be enough bandwagon fans to join this playoff spectacle anyways. I give the Falcons a slight edge to pull off the upset here due to their playoff experience, but if they can't contain Gurley, they will be done. As always, the Falcons may win the first 2.5 quarters and then mail it in at the most inappropriate moment. We shall see. In the larger picture, all of these teams seem like nothing more than a nice bait for the Patriots. There is an explosive ESPN piece today on the palace intrigue and politics between the Hoodie, Brady, and Kraft. For most teams, this would be a major detraction. Of course for the Patriots this is probably the best thing ever. Hoodie will craft this into motivational fodder and the Pats may have just clinched their Super Bowl, though that seemed like an eventuality this season anyways.

Instant Masterpiece!

There are instant classics and then there was the Cards-Packers game last Saturday night. I don't think the term instant classic does this game justice. This was an instant masterpiece. The game featured 2 crazy hail-marys at the end of regulation to send it to OT and an exciting 75-yard play to start the OT. This little commentary will tell you all you need to know about this game. I was re-watching the 4th quarter and with around 4 mins to go in regulation, with all of the end of the game and OT drama yet to play out, analyst Cris Collinsworth already says "I have never seen anything like this game!" And then all the mayhem happened! The reason he said that was because the game already had some wild twists and turns. There was a pick-6 by Patrick Peterson called back in the first half. Also, when Cris made that comment, the Cards had just scored a go-ahead TD where Carson Palmer's pass was tipped in the end zone and somehow the ball ended up in the hands of Michael Floyd. Thats a pass that could have easily been intercepted if the ball had bounced a different way. That drive also featured a couple of passes by Palmer that could have and should have been intercepted and returned to the house the other way.

Palmer didn't have a great game. He was up and down and kept the Cards fans on pins and needles the entire game with every pass he made. But at the end of the night, he made enough great plays to win the game. Fitz was his amazing self as always and dominated the OT to single-handedly carry the Cards home. The big 75 yard pass play in OT was a beauty by both Palmer and Fitz. Aaron Rodgers made some amazing plays as well in that last drive to send the game into OT. I can't believe he completed two hail-mary TD passes at the end of games this season. For all the enjoyment this game gave us Cards fans, if the result was any different, this would have been one of the most painful losses. I am not sure if I would still be calling it a masterpiece. A-Rod completed a 61 yard pass on 4th and 20 from his own end zone with 50 seconds to go in regulation. I encourage you to do a search on Google for "4th and 26" and you will see a play from the 2004 divisional round where Donovan McNabb completes a 4th and 26 pass to Freddie Mitchell to keep a late-game drive alive against the same Packers. The Eagles forced OT and eventually won that game. To this day, thats a signature play and a painful memory for the Packer fans. If the Cards had lost this game, us Cards fans would have had multiple A-Rod plays painfully etched in our memory forever. But the Cards survived those plays behind Fitz's own signature moves.

For the second playoffs in a row, Aaron Rodgers lost in OT where he didn't even get to touch the ball. As excited as I am about this game and happy that the Cards won, I agree with Clay Matthews that they have to change the OT rules. Few years back, NFL changed the rule to make sure a field goal in the first drive of OT didn't end the game right there. That change was good, but didn't go far enough.  Now, a TD in the first drive in OT ends the game. The logic being, football is a team sport and the defense has to do it's job and prevent the TD to be able to continue the game. I don't agree with this and both offenses deserve at least one shot. NFL has a hard salary cap and super star QBs like Aaron Rodgers are paid handsomely, every dollar of which they richly deserve. This means such teams may not have enough money to build a strong defense as much as they may want to. Point being, different teams have different philosophies of team building and different strengths and weaknesses. If a team doesn't have a good enough defense, today they will probably lose the game if they lose the coin flip in OT. Thats not right.

Forget whats right and whats wrong. Purely from a business and entertainment perspective, how does it make sense for the NFL to decide a big playoff game in overtime with Aaron Rodgers, one of the legendary players in the history of the league, standing on the sidelines and not even being allowed to participate? Thats like Cleveland Cavaliers playing the OT of a game 7 in the NBA playoffs and the result being decided by the bench players of the Cavs with LeBron just standing on the sideline and not getting a chance to touch the ball. NFL better fix this. I will add this though. The college type OT rule is better, but it is also flawed. In that scheme, the team playing second has a huge advantage in that they know exactly how much to score and are in 4 down territory the entire way. The team playing first on the other hand, has to pick between a field goal or a TD as they get close to field goal territory. May be we should just have a 10 minute OT period and let the chips fall where they may at the end of it.

This is a good topic for the off-season, though I doubt if the NFL will touch this. For now, the Cards march on and don't have to explain a bunch of crazy events from this game. I loved Bruce Arians throwing on 2nd down towards the end in an attempt to completely keep the ball away from Aaron Rodgers. The throw fell on the ground and they ended up giving A-Rod an extra 35 seconds. A QB like that can do a lot of damage, whether you give him 90 seconds or 120 seconds. So I was fine with them going for the kill there. But if they had lost, that would have been the talk of the town. It turns out it was Palmer's call based on what he saw at the line. Arians would have still had to explain that call, plus he would not have thrown Palmer under the bus if they had lost. All of this is moot now since they won. Now they get to play the scary looking Panthers in Carolina. Panthers dominated the first half against the Seahawks and barely held on to win the game in the second half. Broncos and Pats won at home too. There were 4 good games last weekend, but the other 3 pale in comparison to the masterpiece theatre that was the Packers-Cards featuring the prestigious thespian Larry Fitzgerald.