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Anquan Boldin: Cardinals Players Stopped Betting Money on Him, Larry Fitzgerald
May 4, 2020
Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin were among the most dominant wide receiver duos of the 2000s—so much so that teammates stopped betting on their 100-yard games.
"I don't know if I should be saying this," Boldin told Doug & Wolf of Arizona Sports, "but at that time, we used to have deals in our locker room where, say offensively, we would say, 'OK, if a running back has over 100 yards, who's going to put up money for that?' Somebody else would be like, 'If a receiver gets 100-plus, who has money on that?'
"It got to the point where nobody would put money on the receiver stats because every game it was gonna be either me or Fitz that got 100 yards. They ended up bumping ours up to like, I don't know, like 120, 130 or even 150 at one point, just to challenge us. ... We felt like at that point, with how we were playing with Kurt [Warner], and then we got (receiver Steve) Breaston in...you couldn't guard us. At some point, one of us is going to have a big game."
Fitzgerald and Boldin were teammates from 2004-09. During that time, the pair combined for 45 games of 100 or more receiving yards—a little less than one every other game. That level of production speaks to the level of consistency the Cardinals' passing game enjoyed in that era—especially after Ken Whisenhunt arrived in 2008 and opened up the offense.
As for Boldin admitting the Cardinals had bets going, perhaps it's a little bit of a breach of locker room code—albeit one that almost everyone knew was part of sports culture.
