Cardinals weren't as bad as they looked at Gillette

Many football fans in New England -- including the region's best-known sportswriter -- are either angry or stunned or both that the Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl. The memories of the Patriots' dismantling of an Arizona team that didn't appear even to show up at Gillette Stadium in December still are too fresh; the Cardinals looked more like an overmatched semipro team than a championship contender.

But were the Cardinals really that bad?

Let's look again at how the first quarter played out, knowing that Ken Whisenhunt's team had wrapped up a division title and could afford to do things like emphasize the run simply to practice execution:

* The Cardinals started their first drive deep in their own end; Tim Hightower ran twice between the tackles for a total of six yards. On third down and 4, Patriots linebacker Mike Vrabel got through the line of scrimmage on a draw play and dropped Hightower for a four-yard loss. Three and out -- though one wonders if you would have seen Kurt Warner throw a slant to Larry Fitzgerald on third down if this had been a game the Cardinals needed to win.

* The Patriots started their first drive at Arizona's 33-yard line thanks to a 28-yard punt return from Wes Welker. It only took six runs and one five-yard pass to Kevin Faulk to get the ball into the end zone. 7-0, Patriots.

* The Cardinals started their second drive closer to midfield; Hightower again got the ball twice in a row and this time rushed for a total of eight yards. On his third carry, he rushed for nine yards and an apparent first down -- until a flag, an illegal-use-of-the-hands penalty, brought the play back. Facing third-and-12 -- a situation in which few NFL teams moved the ball with much consistency -- Warner threw incomplete. Three and out again.

* The Patriots started their second drive at their own 45-yard line thanks to another impressive return from Welker. Arizona stuffed Sammy Morris' first run for a loss of a yard, but Matt Cassel threw a short pass on the next play that Morris took for 42 yards. Five plays later, Loont Jordan rushed up the middle for his second touchdown. 14-0, Patriots.

* By now, the Patriots knew, whether due to the weather or the game plan, the Cardinals were going to force the run. Hightower got almost nothing on his first two runs of the drive, and Warner was swallowed up by Mike Wright and Richard Seymour for a third-down sack. Three and out again.

* The Patriots went three-and-out on their next drive -- and Chris Hanson's punt went out of bounds at the nine-yard line.

This was a Murphy's Law type of game for Arizona. It was snowing, first of all, which only made their run-no-matter-what game plan even more predictable. And when Hightower almost fumbled away a swing pass from Warner on his next drive, he almost completed the trifecta of bad breaks for Arizona -- bad penalties, bad field position and bad turnovers. The Cardinals even surrendered a big play on defense.

No, the Cardinals didn't play well in that game. But considering that they (a) had just clinched a division title and playoff berth and (b) had just about everything go wrong that could go wrong in the first quarter, is it so surprising the game got out of hand?

Besides, who's to say the work the Cardinals did on their run game against the Patriots didn't pay off on the game-winning drive on Sunday -- a drive on which they ran the ball nine times and threw the ball five times?