SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, TX -

My Friends,

It’s Monday, and the only thing worse than waiting the entire weekend for our guys is next weekend, when they don’t play at all.

The apologies continue down here for the Bears, with many locals complaining they haven’t really beaten anybody, as if the Bears had a hand in choosing their schedule. But the agnostics among us are dwindling by the week, especially with conference competition beating each other up and falling further behind by the day.

Not that this evening’s victim, the vagabond Cardinals, pose any kind of problem. Listening to Dennis Green on the Score last week you had the feeling he drives his golf cart around the Arizona practice field with the left turn signal perpetually on, and in fact he probably is making all those turns, too. Since the Bidwell family pulled up stakes and began their journey west, it’s always felt like the Cards have been moving in circles, maybe making a move into third or second place but always eventually returning to their roost in the basement of whatever division they played.

This was the year the redbirds were supposed to rise again, with Edgerrin James, Kurt Warner and Matt Leinart coming to the rescue of an offense already loaded with Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald at wide receiver. But like their one-time namesake city, Warner crashed while it sounded like coach Green burned more than his share of cigarettes trying to figure out why the phoenix never rises in the valley of the dust.

And it won’t have much luck taking off tonight, either, because it says here that the Cardinals will score more in Busch Stadium this evening than they will in their new desert home.

Game night approaches.

LBF

10/16/2006