Cardinals Have Taken On a “Megamind” Mentality

As the Arizona Cardinals head off to play the Kansas City Chiefs this Sunday in Kansas City, much is being predicted about how the Cards are going to be smash-caked.  So far this year, they have been in close losses and been crushed a few times, most recently last week at home against the Seattle Seahawks.

Early on, the Cards found victories against St. Louis and Oakland but crushing defeats to Atlanta and San Diego.  They’ve had close losses to Tampa Bay and Minnesota.  They’ve yet to carry out one plan that “Megamind”, the new big screen super hero, did during the film and that was to just crush his opponent.  The Cards have yet to blow anyone away yet.  Minnesota was four minutes away from that two weeks ago until the Cards took on one of Megamind’s earliest traits – almost winning the fight.

Megamind finally defeated the mighty Metro Man early on in the movie, only to find out later of course the reports of Metro Man’s demise was greatly exaggerated.  However, throughout much of the film, we were to believe Megamind had finally done it, he had finally defeated the mighty strong and the mighty smart.  Except there was one problem, Megamind grew bored of having no challenges anymore.

Is that what has become of the 2010 Arizona Cardinals?  After years of futility and many close losses, uh-um, almost wins, 2008 and 2009 were years in which the Cards finally learned how to win more consistently.  They had taken over the NFC West and in the playoffs following the 2008 season, they finally conquered the NFC and headed to the Super Bowl, where they were within two minutes of winning it all.

Last Season, the Cards actually had a better regular season, winning an franchise best 10 games as the Arizona Cardinals.  The Cards won their first playoff game against the Green Bay Packers.  All seemed well.  They got whipped by the New Orleans Saints after that, but even after such a demoralizing loss, hopes were high as the Cards still had quarterback Kurt Warner under contract for one more season.  Well, make that one more month.  Warner retired, and that led us to 2010.

As we look back at Megamind, he needed a new challenge after defeating Metro Man.  So what did he do?  He created another super hero, one he was going to be able to groom to fight and then be able to defeat.  Did the Cards do the same thing when they released Matt Leinart?  Sure, we know he wasn’t exciting people like Warner did.  He never would.  As we are finding out though he probably was the best option for the Cards to have a successful season.  Instead, we got Derek Anderson and Max Hall.

Megamind’s big plan to be challenged, yet win, backfired.  The super hero he created didn’t turn out to be such a good thing.  In fact that super hero tried to kill Megamind and nearly accomplished that feat.  The Cardinals plan to go with a veteran quarterback in Derek Anderson, backed up by a promising undrafted rookie, to take them to a third straight NFC West title, has backfired.  Going back and forth between the two quarterbacks and now seemingly sticking with the vet Anderson, is seemingly going to eventually be the Cardinals un-doing of everything gained over the past couple of seasons.

Now the only question remains, does Derek Anderson finally wake up, find that inner-self to defeat his critics and find a way to beat the Chiefs and then the rest of the schedule and get the Cards back to the playoffs, becoming the new hero of Arizona, much like Megamind became the new hero of Metro City?  The choice is his.  He has time to bring the Cards back from the 3-6 record and get this team back on track.  It must start this week in Kansas City or this season has completely gone to a megabust.