Will expectations doom the Arizona Cardinals?

The question is pretty simple, will expectations doom the Arizona Cardinals and keep them from reaching the pinnacle that we all hope they will reach this season: Winning Super Bowl LI?

It is a bigger question and a bigger answer looms in the distance right now, but it is never too early to really think about it.

While not directly comparing apples to apples, look across leagues into the local Arizona Diamondbacks, a team that was loaded on expectations from the hitting to the pitching to the defense, and a few injuries later, a quarter of the way through the season, there isn’t a whole lot to show for it. In fact, the team is only still in the division race because the division as a whole is terrible.

But the Arizona Cardinals need to focus on themselves and they know that everyone is going to be gunning for them. No matter how successful the team has been in the past, pundits and talking heads have always placed them second fiddle in the division (sometimes third or fourth) and an also-ran in the conference. Aside from a great run in 2008-2009 over two seasons with Kurt Warner, the team just hasn’t had a consistent stretch of awesome.

Now, three years into the tenure of Bruce Arians and Steve Keim, the team has back-to-back-to-back double digit winning seasons, back-to-back playoff appearances, and the stage is set with this roster to make that final push they couldn’t make last year.

But that window will begin to close after this season, and a lot of players know it. Some guys may retire, other veterans may not be back because of money, and even more, others may just not have the talent level to give it another season, or have shown the team everything that they can.

To use another baseball analogy, guys may start to push, to force the issue and when you do that, it only leads to mistakes and problems. In baseball an mistake may cost a few runs, or a strikeout, and you can recover from that, but in football, in today’s NFL, you need to focus for 60 minutes or you won’t be able to catch up.

The expectations could propel guys to realize that it is in the view, of this team, with this roster, to win a Super Bowl before the gang has to break-up. It could also doom them should the team lose a few games early in the season and fail to compare to a very good 2015 team.

So, while expectations are something that can drive you, they can also doom you, and while it is too early to say for sure, this team, this coaching stuff, needs to keep them focused on the next game, the next opponent and the next win, and avoid looking too far into the future. Look past anyone, even a bad team, and you’re likely to get burned.