New Orleans-Arizona: Saints and Cards Nurse Major Injuries

The Arizona Cardinals were built in the same fashion as the New Orleans Saints.

They were aggressive defensively and they had Kurt Warner.

They had the ability to spread you out and attack you.

They came within five points of winning the Super Bowl only 18 months ago.

Can you imagine the Saints without Drew Brees? Chase Daniel as the starting quarterback?

That's the situation Arizona finds itself in as rookie Max Hall has assumed the starting job after Matt Leinart and Derrick Anderson both failed.

After a Bobby McCray hit sent Warner into retirement, the Cardinals gave Leinart one more chance.

Well, so much for second chances.

Enter Derrick Anderson. He's too mistake prone and the Cardinals turn to undrafted free agent Hall as their guy.

Teams are forcing them to throw the football and they can not do it successfully. The running game can't generate big numbers because they're seeing loaded fronts.

Defensively, they make some big plays but they surrender a lot of big plays as well.

These days the Cardinals are just another team with plenty of problems.

The Cardinals' challenge this week will be to get into a rhythm offensively against the Saints.

The Saints defense will have an opportunity to return to their previous life of crime against Max. Have no doubt, Gregg Williams will dial up all his quirky blitz packages against the kid from BYU.

The opportunities should exist for the Saints offense to get some mismatches and generate a running game against a suspect Cardinals defense.

However, the Saints have many problems of their own now that Reggie Bush and Pierre Thomas are gone.

With Bush out for at least two more weeks, opposing defenses are rolling their coverages more preventing Marques Colston from doing much damage. Lance Moore and the tight ends have benefited from this but it has altered the Saints offensive approach.

Opposing defenses are taking the big plays away from them. The absence of Bush and Thomas has made the Saints much more of a downhill running team resulting in a lot less fireworks from Drew Brees & Co.

The Saints will face their second rookie QB in a row after seeing Jimmy Clausen one week ago.

"You know what, young quarterbacks follow me everywhere," jokes Cardinals guard and former LSU star Alan Faneca with just the slightest hint of frustration in his voice on WWL Radio. "I had Ben (Roethlisberger), I had Mark Sanchez up in New York. Now we've got Max Hall starting for us here.

"You've just got to be there for them. You know the play call may not come out as fast, not like he's having trouble with it, but there's just going to be times you're going to have to help a young guy out a little bit," says Faneca.

Faneca tells WWL of Cardinals running backs Beanie Wells and Tim Hightower: "Both of them are a little bit different but mostly similar. They both run hard and they both have pretty good vision to the hole. It's nice to be able to keep those fresh legs out there on the field.

With the Cardinals unlikely to air it out with Max Hall, rest assured that if the Cardinals pull off the unlikely upset,Wells and Hightower will have a had a lot to do with it.