New Stadium, Same Cardinals

So the other day on ESPN.com, there was a video clip about the Arizona Cardinals. "Will Edge give the winning edge to Cards" or something to that effect. There's a lot of talk surrounding the big signing by the Cardinals. In addition, they are finally moving out of Sun Devil Stadium and into new, more modern digs. Let's be serious though, just because the Red and White Sox win a couple World Serieses and the Clippers get into the NBA playoffs doesn't mean every underdog is on the rise. The Cardinals have had high picks for years and yet the last time they made the playoffs was in '98. Count that, it's been 8 years since then, they've had enough high and early round picks to nearly build an entire team. Do you really think a running back who had the luxury of playing with the best regular season QB and a good offensive line is going to reverse the destitution in the desert?

Let me offer some anecdotal evidence. In the 2006 edition of Madden, they added a "Create-a-Superstar" mode. As the name suggests, this mode allows you to create and go through the career of a NFL player. You begin right from the beginning and choose a set of parents, which are randomly generated. I kept generating parents until I hit a father who was a "Hall of Fame DB" with a pretty high IQ of 120. The mother had some random job, but had a genius-level IQ. I figure 'Jackpot!', since I wanted to make a Defensive Back anyway. So after you create the guy's appearence you go through preliminaries like the interview and Wonderlic. I scored high on both (it's really easy since the questions don't change much). Finally, draft day arrives and I get picked in the 3rd round by the Cardinals (you can't get drafted in the first two). I figure "it's alright, it's a game, can't be that bad," but I was horribly mistaken. Upon being drafted, my player had a rating of 89, which was even higher than Antrel Rolle (the real first round pick). This high rating instantly thrust my player into the starting lineup. After a weeks worth of computer-simulated practices (I can't be bothered, it's too boring), my player actually got worse, WORSE. If you didn't know, the rating of the player is calculated by the entire team's performance in practice, not individually. Basically the Cardinals are so bad, that they stank in practice, thus making my player worse.

There you have it, I even threw in a computer simulation of just how bad that team is. If you don't trust computers, I'll just name Duane Starks, he's almost like the real-life version of my virtual player. Here's a guy who comes in with a lot of promise, now he's a journeyman, recently cut by the Pats. Certainly the injuries didn't help, but neither does playing for the Cardinals.

Here are some facts too. The Cardinals are still missing a legit QB; Kurt Warner's magic spell has worn off. Plus, their offensive line is nothing to write home about and can you even name 4 players on the Cardinal's Defense?

Anyway, let us all stay realistic, there are Cubs fans you might get the hopes up of.