Arizona Cardinals Waive Goodbye to 2011 Season

Wait for it, wait for it…same old Cardinals.  Ah, there it is.  The thing that has been on the tips of the tongues of Cardinals’ fans for weeks, but now it’s official.  

The Cardinals lost their sixth consecutive game on Sunday.  A game where they led by 18 points at half time but no one expected them to actually come away with a win.

The Cardinals proved everybody right and proceeded to completely roll over to the Ravens in the second half, losing the game in an all too predictable and familiar fashion.

The 1-6 Cardinals are off to their worst start since 2006, when they won the season opener against the 49ers and proceeded to lose the next eight games.  Prior to that, 1997, when they started the season 1-7 through the first two months.

If there were any doubts that their season was over already they are now removed.

But do Cardinals fans have a right to be upset?

Sure the team has wasted another season, but that’s what they do, and that’s what fans should expect.

The Cardinals are an addict and their drug of choice is losing.  They went to rehab briefly a few years ago, got clean and won the division twice, but they have since relapsed into their junkie losing ways.

We thought they had turned the corner, we wanted to believe.  But in the end it was just an illusion.  As an organization, the team has made the playoffs a total of eight times in their 90 year history.

Since coming to Arizona in 1988 they have won nine games or more just three times but have won six or less games 14 times.

The last Cardinals coach to have a winning record with the organization was Don Coryell in the 1970’s.  Ken Whisenhunt, who was thought to be the organization’s savior two years ago, is now at a 33-38 record.  With nine games left he’ll easily have a loss total in the mid forties by the season’s end.

That is a long, proud history of incompetence.

They need to refocus on 2012, on developing the young players on their roster in hopes that they will be impact players next season.

They have to have their first round picks start playing like first round picks.

The Cardinals will likely have a top five draft pick and surely have a top ten pick.  If this team has any hope the Cardinals’ war room has to do a better job than they have in the past three drafts.  The lack of production from early round picks has set the team back immensely.

The team has now come back to where they were before, but perhaps it’s where they’ve always been.