Looks to be an easy in for the Cardinals

Arizona has become a team to cheer for, a sleeper squad who may become a threat to win it all. With Matt Leinhart underperforming the 37-year-old veteran Kurt Warner has become a quintessential piece to stabilize the Cardinals and bring them onto their playoff run. With his talented receiving core of Boldin, Breaston, and Fitzgerald there’s no reason why Warner shouldn’t be able to put away the 2-10 Rams and gain the NFC West title Sunday.

Arizona’s trio of talented receivers gained a mere 173 yards against Philadelphia last week, a little more than half of what they’re capable of on any given Sunday. After being forced to miss two weeks of action earlier in the season Boldin is still well on his way to breaking 1,000 yards receiving and will be looking to do it in this game. An interesting scenario raising obviously the duo of Fitz and Boldin will hit 1,000 yards receiving; however, there is the possibility for a trifecta of Arizona receivers to breach that mark. There’s little else the floundering secondary will be able to do against these three, Warner should have no problem finding one of them opened at any time throughout the game.

Giving up 161.8 yard per game on average Tim Hightower won’t have any problem running all over St. Louis’s rush defense and at the same time he’ll be gaining some much needed confidence as the NFL heads towards the post season. The big question becomes can Arizona rely on the rookie’s ability to run the ball? They are rated an NFL lowest in rushing yards per game with his only 100 yard + rushing game against the Rams in week 9. Two weeks ago Hightower showed he could pound the ball into the end zone against a tough New York Giants defense but the fact of the matter is there will be teams with strong a line and secondary come playoffs and the Cards are going to need that balance. This game is going to be pivotal for Hightower to get himself into a good grove and build some momentum.

Tough back-to-back losses might stifled the Arizona defense early on but look to see them ironing out the kinks against a bottom of the barrel offense that can only muster a mere 13.2 points per game. After missing three straight weeks the Ram’s star running back Steven Jackson posted 94 yards of rushing against Miami’s defense but was, from what many experts said, exhausted by the 4^th quarter. With the St. Louis running back stating “That was definitely more of a workload than I had anticipated,” regarding his performance against the Dolphin’s it sounds safe to say he’s not yet back to 100% health just yet. The last time Jackson played against Arizona he was held to 7 carries for only 17 yards, a number that the rush defense would love to duplicate. Though Marc Bulger isn’t Donovan McNabb the Cardinals’ defense needs to work on its red zone defense after allowing 6 TD last week (4 passing, 2 rushing) all of which were score in less than 10 yards of territory.

I don’t want to sound too confident but I’ll certainly have a bottle of the bubbly standing by to help coronate the NFC West champs on Sunday. Bill predicts a 38-10 victory in favor of the Cards.