Are You Ready For Some Football?

Hey all,

Sunday was a day of sports for me. Football is by far my favorite sport to watch and earlier in the week I had a chance to score some very inexpensive Cardinals tickets to catch them take on the Houston Texans. This is my second game at the stadium, my first being the opportunity to see my original home town team The Cleveland Browns two years ago, which I actually believe I posted on.

The tickets I had procured were upper deck seats on the corner of the end zone. Not the greatest adamantly, but for the price a good deal. I went with my friend Steph, whom may be a bigger football fan than even I. As we were meeting another opportunity presented itself to upgrade our tickets to lower level seating for free. Close friends of Steph's parents are season ticket holders and hadn't sold their seats, so they gave them to us. We got to move down about 30 rows from the front. We had a great view of the field and of the Western end zone.

Overall the stadium is just a wonderful venue for football. The dome can be open or closed (it was closed today) to create the perfect environment. Today it was beautiful and cool inside, with no pesky shadows or sun beams ruining your view. Combined with a parking pass which got us stadium based parking, it was shaping up to be a great day.

The game itself was far from what I expected. The Texans are known for their weak secondary this year and I expected a very pass prolific Cardinals team to light them up and run up the score, and in the first half they did not disappoint. By halftime they were up 21 to 0 and the game looked to be in the bag. The second half was a total change though, with Houston getting excellent pressure on Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner and effectively shutting down both the pass and the Cardinals already negligible run. Meanwhile the Texans also found their passing game, running a series of screens and short yardage throws that efficiently moved them down field. The Cards defense was unable to get pressure on Texans QB Matt Schaub nor could they stop the short passing game. By the start of the fourth quarter, the Texans had tied the score and were marching to score again until an opportune interception by Arizona led to a touchdown return and the lead. Still Schaub and the Texans got the ball back with several minutes to go and marched down the field, getting deep into the Cards Red Zone on the 4th yard line. Finally, the Cards defense, which had been picked apart on short yardage plays, stepped up and stopped them on 4 consecutive plays, from the 4th yard line down to the inches mark. It was an incredible turn as the Cards regained the ball on their own 1 yard line to run out the clock.

I expected the Cards to blow up this team, but there is still some offensive and defensive opportunities on the team to address. The Cards need to step their game up if they want to repeat their run into the playoffs. Still I saw some flashes of brilliance from the team, and in the end, a win is a win and no one really remembers the details. Looking forward to the teams game next week and in viewing how the rest of the season works out.

Thanks for reading.

End of Line.
Gerrad!