He took hits last year that normally would have sidelined him. He’s tougher then he gets credit for. Nobody, inlcuding some of us thought he’d make it all 16 games last year, let alone the playoffs and Super Bowl.

We did. I’m not going to make any excuses. We just stunk in the preseaon. From what we’ve heard, Whisenhunt did ZERO game planning and suspected that some teams(Packers and Broncos) did gameplan against us. The offensive chemistry has been off, but that could be with the loss of Todd Haley. Most of us aren’t worried as several Cardinal players have said their going to unload their playbook/anger this Sunday. ; )

Anyway, at this point Hightower is the starter but you can imagine seeing a good amount of carries by Wells on Sunday. So far Wells has looked great in the preseason and if he maintains it during the regular season, I could see him passing up Hightower after the bi week if the Cardinals are struggling.
In all fairness to Hightower, he’s looked very good this preseason also and has greatly improved from last year.

1. It does, because speed backs generally are difficult to defend for the Cardinals defense for some odd reason.
2. Boldin has been nursing a hamstring, but didn’t play in the last 2 preseason games and has said he’ll be playing on Sunday.
3. No. Wells tweaked his ankle 3 weeks ago but should be near or at 100% by Sunday.
4. Well Whisenhunt isn’t technically new at offensive coordinator because he called plays his first year here. So I’m not worried there. On defense, Bill Davis has already showed signs of bringing a valid blitz. I am a little worried, but the D can’t get much worse then when Pendergast was coordinator.
5. You can’t really be too concerned since it’s just a statistic. Teams rarely had problems in the 80’s and 90’s getting back to the Super Bowl(you guys should know that), so I don’t see why it should be a problem now. Not to mention we got virtually all of our starters back.
6. I put togethe a segment predicting the Cardinals record game by game, they ended up 10-6. Don’t sound the homer alarm yet, we split the series with you guys in my prediction.

 - The Cards special teams are probably one of the bigger question marks on this team, especially at the returner spots. Breaston will probably start the season as the primary punt and kick returner, if his knee is up to it. He’s a good punt returner but he’s below average as a kick returner. Ideally LaRod Stephens-Howling will take over as the kick returner sooner rather than later but I’d bet that Whiz plays it safe to start the season. As far as coverage units, I think we’ll be improved but nothing great. We were terrible last year covering kicks and it got so bad that they spent several games squibbing away from decent returners. Hopefully some of that is better this season but we honestly won’t know until the ball is in the air on Sunday.

 - Who know’s about Warner? I think the Cards think he has one good year in him and then they’d like to see Matty boy take over. I will say though that Warner’s arm hasn’t lost a thing and he was never really a mobile QB anyways so I’m not sure his physical skills are diminishing. I’ve always thought that if you give KW three seconds or more in the pocket he’ll kill you but if you get pressure on him quickly, preferably off the edge, he can be rattled and when he’s rattled he’s a turnover machine. That being said, given the Niners lack of a premier pass rush, I think Warner will do just fine on Sunday.

 - Prediction? Score? I think it’ll be a close game but the Cardinals win. History says that these two teams play each other very tight but I think the Cards are the more talented team and they’re at home. No other team in the NFC has posted a better record at home over the past two seasons than the Arizona Cardinals.

He was absolutely dominating everyone up until that point.

The other dude just landed right on his knee and bent it sideways.
I can’t imagine how much that hurt…..

1. Well actually, Gandy played pretty well all of last year, minus the Super Bowl. So far this preseason, he hasn’t looked the best, but the offense overall hasn’t either. I’m not sure what you mean about opening holes because Hightower averaged 4.6 YPC in the preseason, Wells averaged about 5.
2. From the whole 2 quarters of action I’ve seen of Beanie, I’d say he’s picked up some nice blitzes, but it’s too soon to tell. He said he doesn’t struggle receiving the ball, it’s because in college they rarely threw it to him.
3. The defense looked great in the first 2 preseason games, not allowing a touchdown. I don’t know if you mixed up your games because the starting D had 4 sacks on Phillip Rivers. Against the Packers, yes I can blame a lot of it on not game planning but also a lack emotion on the field. A lot of players expressed not gettting excited for the preseason.
4.Well if I’m going to rank them, a lot does have to go off of last year because it’s the most recent history we have, so I’d rank them…
1st – Arizona, they’re the NFC Champs for now
2nd – San Francisco, I really see them being a tough team this year
3rd – Seattle, They’ve already had injury problems and are changing to a new head coach
4th – St Louis, They haven’t done enough yet to win the NFC West

Cards – 10-6
49ers – 8-8
Seahawks- 7-9
Rams – 5-11