One For Guantanamo

After another miserable Sunday I had a sudden revelation: Hey, being forced to watch Cardinal games could be an activity added to the Guantanamo Bay Bag O’ Tricks. For those people who object to water-boarding, I’d like to suggest replacing the technique with strapping detainees to boards and saturating them with Cardinal games. We could single handedly wipe out terrorism with a month of Sundays.

Though I might consider watching the Cardinals torture, I still found myself on my ten- year-anniversary trip, with my wife, in San Diego, at a sports bar, watching the Cardinals lose yet again. I think I stunned the bar owner when I asked him if he could turn one of the twelve TVs to the Cardinal game, but he did it. And I stayed there the whole time, watching a slow death. At half time I had hoped to see the team make some adjustments—boy, was I wrong! Maybe Whisenhunt and his coaches need to learn the definition of adjustments: Make changes at halftime and try something different. For instance, Tampa Bay was playing a 2 deep zone—Cardinals should have thrown the short 5 yard passes down the middle to the tight end and not to Michael Urban who cannot catch the ball in traffic. Warner was throwing the ball into double and triple coverage and acting like a rookie. He should have thrown the ball away—after all, this was only Tampa Bay they were playing.

The defense played well enough to win the game, but they did have some flashbacks to years past. For example, Tampa Bay drove for a score on the opening drive of the second half. Didn’t Whisenhunt have any words of wisdom for them in the locker room at half time?

There was one shining moment last Sunday at the sports bar in San Diego. Unfortunately, it did not occur on my screen, nor on the screen for the Chargers fans, who did not have much better of a Sunday. No, the one moment that united the bar and brought everyone to their feet occurred on the screen showing the 350 pound Detroit Lion Shaun Rogers lumbering 66 yards with an intercepted ball. He was knocking Bronco offensive players to the side like paper dolls, before diving into the end zone like it was a day at the beach. The Charger fans and I, for lack of anything to hope for in our respective games, all stood and cheered. But though he was the hero for the moment, the Cardinals play the Lions this week, and the Broncos humiliation one week could very well be ours this week.