Rightfully so the cards have been ripped for what has happened..But that doesn't mean I think what they write is true.
Even for sportswriters (as their profession), its hard for them to pay attention to every team, and ours is one that many probably cut corners on YEAR AFTER YEAR. But this season had the dire-est predictions and judgements from the national media as I have EVER seen.
I'm not defending them one bit, but if say the dolphins lost fiedler, r.williams, and c.chambers, gadsen, 3rd wr here, and their starting fs, how good do you think they would be? Not last, but the national writers are aware of their good defense and other factors. What are they aware of from us?
They don't have the info on our favorite team like we do, like we get from this board. I'd say 90% of the posters here have 10x the knowledge about the cards than 90% of sportswriters. That might even be a conservative estimate, so I apoligize for that. Then you throw in a supposed misspent pick on a bad draft day trade, and you are going to get slammed.
Hey I wanted suggs or leftwich, and understood why they traded down, but didn't know if they got quality players from it.
Then they say emmitt is old, jackson is larry brown, and plummer is god.
But there are many reasons why the cards could surprise, and at this point the only ones that notice are us, the cards fans. That's the reality, and I'm sure I'm telling no one anything new on this.
We've seen mcaddley, kasper and such play last season. We saw them get thrown to wolves last year. National media is saying we lost our top 3 receivers THIS YEAR....when in actuality we were way beyond that LAST year. Yeah we had frank for most of it, but he was diminishing and couldn't be the lone go to guy (can't blame him). But with this staff, if our #1 guy goes down, it isn't going to affect how defenses play us. (unlike boston's injury did). And I doubt we will have that many injuries again. So add in that valuable experience last year, drafting wr's in the 1st and 2nd. Trading for a wr....At this point we are stronger at wr than we were last year on the field....not on paper...but ON THE FIELD. So this great dropoff the national media is talking about is so overblown imo its ridiculous. We hit rock bottom last year with our wr's.
We are watching, reading, discussing, and writing stuff about our teams players that no one else will ever know about because they don't care.
The true experts of the cardinals are us the fans in most cases because lets face it, no one in the media outside of the valley really EVER pays attention to the cards.
So on that note, what do I see.
1. I see a great wr battle going on. We won't have a true #1 receiver at this point but I think we will have 3 or 4 quality #2 wr's.
Prediction: Media's love affair with our depleted corps being retched are FAR more wrong than right. I believe that 1 or 2 wr's will really step it up this year.
Who, I don't know. Instead of being a nfl europe wr core as the feeling most of us get when we read national attention on the subject, I believe it will be a position of depth.
2. I see a more active defensive line. I don't know how many more sacks we will get, but pace and king have been very impressive SO far, and with kvb finally having a year's experience, and the 2nd year return from a knee injury thing, plus our new 1 gap defense, we will have an obvious increase from 21 sacks. I say at this point 30-33 sacks this year would be a good improvement, but of course I hope for more, and nothing from the first preseason game showed me that it can't get better.
National media simply says.....passed on suggs yada yada, reached for pace (even though he has 2 sacks already), no free agent pickups on the line, and the fact that our 21 sacks last year was an improvement.
3. Ease of schedule. I believed I read that we have the easiest?
Some national media members say that we should be slightly competitive because of this. I think it opens a door for us to win some more games and be competitive.
4. Speed at lb's...wow...our guy's were penetrating and stuffing rb's last weekend AND MORE (i.e. pass rushing).
I can't remember seeing such stellar linebacking play on this team. (AND IT WAS what, the first preseason game) With the fact that they are quicker, have more room to roam because the dl will already be in the backfield, and the fact we want raynoch to rush like we were going to use colvin our lb's are much improved. I was kind of worried about fredrickson leaving, but I think those fears are unfounded now.
The best part is most of them are young, and are going to improve during the season (and future). I think we have a VERY overlooked lb core by the national media, except I do think i've read some stuff about raynoch.
5. Hey without plummer we took about 25 take aways off the board and only added about 10-15 with blake....that's +10 in our favor.
6. Shipp started to bust out, and to add emmit smith gives us the best rb core we've had since johnny johnson and ron moore...and I think both of our guys now are a whole lot better than either of those guys then.
I sure did love that clip of emitt. For that 1 play we got the emitt of old....and if he can do something similar to that 3 or 4 times a game added with shipp, and our ol, we might have something special.
Hey emmit may be old but never has had a major knee injury... his old age factor should be diminished a little because of that.. But in no way interpret this as a "emmitt of '93" statement.
7. I've said it before and I'll say it again, our deficiencies in offense youth and inexperience will be slightly offset by their speed and our deep throwing qb. If you are going to have young receiver's...at least have 'em fast. If you have that going for you a strong arm qb will fit the best. We got that. Plus that qb should find f.jones more often...or diamond????????
8. *joking* didn't i read somewhere that there was a drive on this board to take stacker 2 with ephedrine and put in the gatorade at san fran, seat, and st. louis. How can we lose the division then when warner, hassleback, garcia, s.alexander, faulk, owens, holt, etc. are all out? *joking*
Obviously you can't take one preseason game and say in stone that our guys will play up to that level this whole year, but unlike the national media which already has predictions on where the cards will finish in 2015, I think our viewpoints are a tad more accurate and realistic even if a tad too optimistic.
Many of the national media thinks we will have the #1 pick next year, and us, the people that really know cards football, can see a losing record is probable, but an 8-8 record or better is not out of the question. Although it might take a whole lot of kool aid smirnoff flavored to picture it.
In my opinion the only reason why I can see that most of us don't say winning record is possible is becasue rightfully so we are all still not counting on a pass rush and good wr play. If those two sections were covered I don't believe many could state we are too thin everywhere else not to compete or make a playoff push at least.
So when pace and king etc are showing us signs of something we haven't seen here in years...a pass rush, and our wr's like kasper keep doing things they shouldn't be doing because of inexperience or lack of ability, its nice to sit here and think cautiously optimistic about our chances to take the league by storm.
The only other thing we lack in depth I believe is backup qb and 3rd cb. If blake goes down we're lost. I don't think our cb's are that bad. I've liked hill since he broke in. I remember thinking we might have a player when we drafted him in the 7th round...in 2000? or 2001?
Basically who cares what the national media writes? I'm not saying I don't care, but we should all know better by now to not take much stock in the national medias reporting on the cards. Because its obvious they don't do their homework...Grain of salt baby, grain of salt.
So here's to our believers ON the cards, because it seems they double in number, and to the subrtraction of last year's malcontents (although not always publically critical) of plummer, lassiter, boston, etc.
Here's to us the fans that brave each season of losing and can still stay focused and unbiased when judging our talent.
Because that in itself might be the #1 factor going for the cards winning fortunes in 2003...to sneak up on everyone.
Hopefully other teams players and coaches buy into this #1 pick in 04 business because it can only help our favorite team succeed.
