Cardinals crumble as Bears rumble

The Lil’ Mahi must have been loving life on Tuesday morning while Matt Leinart and the Arizona Cardinals cruised to a 20-0 lead over the undefeated Chicago Bears under the Phoenix sky.

The quarterback from Southern Cal was looking good and he had his team on course for its second win of the season in what looked to be the biggest upset of the 2006-07 season—that was until the fourth quarter began.

Rex Grossman was unable to get any offense going for the Bears but my fantasy league kicker Robby Gould scored Chicago’s first points to cut the lead to 20-3. Not long after that Neil Rackers gave the red birds their 20-point lead back and what looked to be insurance from an improbable comeback.

Grossman never did get on track, but Brian Urlacher and the Bears took matters into their own hands on the defensive side of the ball. In what was one of the worst meltdowns and one of the most inspiring comebacks in recent memory, the Bears recovered two fumbles and ran them back for touchdowns before Devin Hester ran Scott Player’s punt back 83-yards for the score.

The Windy City fans were roaring in the desert, while the hometown fans threw-up in their seats as the lead was erased by two defensive scores and a special teams thriller. Gould gets credit for the go-ahead score when he booted the extra point to give the Bears a 24-23 lead with less than three minutes remaining in the game but the defense deserves all of the accolades it receives for keeping the Bears out of the loss column and making the Lil’ Mahi cry.

Urlacher was all over the place in the fourth quarter and there was hardly a play in which he was not involved. It was as if he got the win by willing the Bears to win it, but the same thing was happening by the Cards in the first half when Leinart was making Chicago look foolish. That’s why they play all four quarters.

Our local prognosticators struggled a bit this time around as the best records were the 8-5 marks turned in by Will Hunter and John Blanco. Blanco improved to 64-23 overall to maintain his lead in the chase for the Miller Lite Super Bowl party tickets, and his lead over Jon Cramer increased to four games as the maven of mullets went 7-6 last week. At 60-27, Cramer is still a game ahead of Hunter, but the lineman is still in the hunt at 59-28.

Big Keith Nabors checked in with a disappointing 5-8 record last week but the terror from Tinian is still in fourth place at 54-33 and still has a shot at the title. The big man doesn’t have such a big lead over the Lil’ Mahi, as the kid from Saipan International School matched his dismal 5-8 to keep pace in fifth at 52-35, while the super girls remain in last.

Kelly Butcher and Sue Knecht were steady at 7-6 last week, but their matching 51-36 records are not as pretty as they are. The girls will have a chance to shake things up a bit as they went out on a few limbs and go head to head in four of this weekend’s contests.