In the mostly sorry history of the Cardinals franchise, from its days in Chicago, St Louis and Arizona, the team had never managed to win as many as two playoff games in a single season.
Before this postseason, the Cardinals had a total of one playoff victory since winning the NFL championship in 1947. That was in 1998.
But all that is history. And so are the Carolina Panthers.
PHOTO: AP
The Cardinals marched into Bank of America Stadium on Saturday night for a divisional playoff game and thoroughly outplayed heavily favored Carolina in a 33-13 victory in front of a stunned crowd of 73,695. Arizona, which beat Atlanta in the first round, reached the National Football Conference title game for the first time since the league began holding conference championships.
Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner completed 21 of 32 passes for 220 yards and two touchdowns, numbers that probably would have been even more dominating had the game been competitive in the second half. Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme, playing on his 34th birthday, was 17 of 34 for 205 yards with five interceptions and a lost fumble.
Of course, it is easy to rewrite the record book when it is filled with mostly blank pages. But who would have figured the Cardinals would manage that this season? Arizona won the NFC West, but with a mediocre 9-7 record. And the Cardinals were 2-4 in their last six regular-season games.
That did not seem to matter a week ago, when Arizona beat Atlanta, 30-24, for the first postseason victory by the Cardinals since 1998 and the first home playoff victory in 61 years. But that victory earned the Cardinals a visit to the Eastern time zone, which has been disastrous for them this season. The Cardinals were 0-5 in the East this year, and faced a Panthers team that was 8-0 at home in the regular season.
The Cardinals also were without the Pro Bowl wide receiver Anquan Boldin, who was on the inactive list after sustaining a strained left hamstring against Atlanta last week. Boldin had 89 catches for 1,038 yards and 11 touchdowns during the regular season.
It did not seem to bode well for the Cardinals when the Panthers scored in the opening minutes. A 9-yard touchdown run by Jonathan Stewart just three minutes, four seconds into the game capped Carolina’s opening drive.
But the field quickly tilted the other way. Arizona scored two touchdowns in less than a minute on the way to a dominating first half as the Panthers bumbled and blew any chance at making it a competitive game.
The onslaught began when Warner hit Tim Hightower on a 3-yard touchdown pass with 2:43 left in the first quarter to tie it at 7-7. Arizona’s second touchdown came less than a minute later, when Edgerrin James scored on a 4-yard touchdown run to put the Cardinals ahead, 14-7.
After Delhomme was intercepted at the Cardinals’ goal line by Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, the Cardinals converted the turnover into a 49-yard field goal by kicker Neil Rackers with 10:16 left in the second quarter, putting Arizona ahead, 17-7. Rackers added a 20-yarder about five minutes later to make it 20-7.
If the Panthers had any designs on rallying, they ended when Delhomme was picked off for the second time. It came on Carolina’s first play from scrimmage after Rackers’ second field goal. Gerald Hayes intercepted a pass intended for Muhsin Muhammad and gave Arizona the ball at the Carolina 44-yard line.
Three plays later, Warner found Larry Fitzgerald for a 29-yard touchdown pass with 3:32 left in the half to make it 27-7.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later