Most likely: Cards win division or no playoffs.

[LoyaltyisaCurse]

Just six weeks into the season in the NFC:

7 Teams have 4 wins
5 Teams have 3 wins

WOW!

 

[blindseyed]

New York Giants 4 1
Washington Redskins 4 2
Dallas Cowboys 4 2
Philadelphia Eagles 3 3


Green Bay Packers 3 3
Chicago Bears 3 3
Minnesota Vikings 3 3
Detroit Lions 0 5


Carolina Panthers 4 2
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 4 2
Atlanta Falcons 4 2
New Orleans Saints 3 3


Arizona Cardinals 4 2
San Francisco 49ers 2 4
Seattle Seahawks 1 4
St. Louis Rams 1 4

 

[cardsfanmd]

Shouldn't be too tough, as 6-7 wins will probably be good enough for the division crown. If we get to eight W's I say we rest the starters until the playoffs.

 

[Dback Jon]

Lot of football left to be played...

NFC East isn't so tough now...

 

[NeverSayDieFan]

WIN the WEST...

I could give a rats' butt how the experts "rank" the divisions! You get in and you can do some damage. It's been done before, and it can be done again. ...And a Championship is a Championship! GO CARDS!! That being said, there's a long ways to go, and since we've waited years for this, where's the rush?? I prefer to savor the moment. Did I mention WE BEAT DALLAS??

 

[ThunderCard]

New York Giants 4 1
Washington Redskins 4 2
Dallas Cowboys 4 2
Philadelphia Eagles 3 3



Carolina Panthers 4 2
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 4 2
Atlanta Falcons 4 2
New Orleans Saints 3 3

There is still a ton of division games in the NFC East and South so it should start thinning out over the weeks.

 

[cardpa]

At this point in the season assume the Cards go 5-5 the rest of the season.
This gives them a 9-7 record.

This would mean the niners need to go 7-3
The seahags need to go 8-3
the lambs need to go 8-3

Just to get to 9-7 also.

I thiink thats a tall order for any of the three teams to get there.

I would say things are looking in our favor right now.

 

[Spielman]

Just gotta take care of business against the other division teams. Five division games remaining. Win those, that guarantees 9-7, and the other teams almost certainly won't be able to catch up.

 

[TigToad]

Our hardest division game was SF on the road and we won that one. If we win out our division games (3 at home), we can't win less than 9.

 

[bratwurst]

Our hardest division game was SF on the road and we won that one. If we win out our division games (3 at home), we can't win less than 9.

Our hardest division game will be the next one. And so forth for the rest of the year.

 

[Russ Smith]

We have a shot at a wildcard berth too but yeah realisitically the easy way is to win the division. Look this in many way is 1998 all over except I think we're a better overall team, and the division is much weaker. But we have no excuse for not making the playoffs this year.

There are 4 teams in our division, the Rams have already fired their coach. the Seahawks have been inundated with injuries, and their coach is in his last season. The 49ers coach could be fired very soon and they're playing a complete unknown at QB with Alex Smith out for the year.

There's absolutely no excuse if we don't win the division this year.

 

[Totally_Red]

We have a shot at a wildcard berth too but yeah realisitically the easy way is to win the division. Look this in many way is 1998 all over except I think we're a better overall team, and the division is much weaker. But we have no excuse for not making the playoffs this year.

There are 4 teams in our division, the Rams have already fired their coach. the Seahawks have been inundated with injuries, and their coach is in his last season. The 49ers coach could be fired very soon and they're playing a complete unknown at QB with Alex Smith out for the year.

There's absolutely no excuse if we don't win the division this year.

Only valid excuse I can think of is (God forbid) Kurt Warner and Adrian Wilson go down for the year. Even then the Cardinals might to be able to win the division considering the weakness of the other teams.

 

[TJ]

Not trying to be a pessimist or anything, but the last time we went 4-2 to start a season, we ended 5-11.

Let's take it one game at a time, let the bye week heal our warrior's wounds and take it to Carolina. I will feel much much more confident if our guys can get it done on the road against a quality opponent.

 

[Russ Smith]

Not trying to be a pessimist or anything, but the last time we went 4-2 to start a season, we ended 5-11.

Let's take it one game at a time, let the bye week heal our warrior's wounds and take it to Carolina. I will feel much much more confident if our guys can get it done on the road against a quality opponent.

The problem that year was that coming off the 2nd half of the prior year the OC(Rich Olson) had really emphasized run the ball, safe passes, don't turn it over. we won 7 games the prior year, started 4-2, and then teams just said that's it we are not letting you run the ball. We were forced to throw, then we had a bunch of WR injuries and were playing guys like McAddley and Kasper.

the combination of having to throw, with inexperienced WR's, was a nightmare for a turnover prone QB and after having 1 game in the first 6 with more than 1 turnover, we had 7 such games in the last 10 and fell apart. Add in a 29th ranked defense and we fell apart.

That was a nightmare scenario season due to injuries.

I think we're much better this year but the key is still the same, don't beat yourself with turnovers.

 

[Dr. Jones]

Yep.... How we respond to a tough Carolina team after a week off will be huge for the rest of the season.

Win that, and we will be all talking about something special.

 

[TJ]

The problem that year was that coming off the 2nd half of the prior year the OC(Rich Olson) had really emphasized run the ball, safe passes, don't turn it over. we won 7 games the prior year, started 4-2, and then teams just said that's it we are not letting you run the ball. We were forced to throw, then we had a bunch of WR injuries and were playing guys like McAddley and Kasper.

the combination of having to throw, with inexperienced WR's, was a nightmare for a turnover prone QB and after having 1 game in the first 6 with more than 1 turnover, we had 7 such games in the last 10 and fell apart. Add in a 29th ranked defense and we fell apart.

That was a nightmare scenario season due to injuries.

I think we're much better this year but the key is still the same, don't beat yourself with turnovers.

I agree with you completely. This team is far superior than the 2002 team. We lost our top 4 WRs that season so we were starting pratice squad scrubs.

I just don't want people to get too far ahead of themselves. This team is playing well, but the main issue remains that we still haven't proven that we can duplicate those results on the road. That is why I am reserving judgement until the Carolina game, when we play a quality NFC opponent on their turf. Beat them and I'll gladly hook myself up to the kool-aid pump.

 

[arthurracoon]

The problem that year was that coming off the 2nd half of the prior year the OC(Rich Olson) had really emphasized run the ball, safe passes, don't turn it over. we won 7 games the prior year, started 4-2, and then teams just said that's it we are not letting you run the ball. We were forced to throw, then we had a bunch of WR injuries and were playing guys like McAddley and Kasper.

the combination of having to throw, with inexperienced WR's, was a nightmare for a turnover prone QB and after having 1 game in the first 6 with more than 1 turnover, we had 7 such games in the last 10 and fell apart. Add in a 29th ranked defense and we fell apart.

That was a nightmare scenario season due to injuries.

Wow - that brings back memories

All those WR's we thought at the time were awesome

Rich Olson's Run-Run-Pass-Punt offense

 

[Jttsaz]

I beleive the key will be the St. Louis, 49ers and Hawks game coming up..if we take all 3 of those I think we put the division away..follow that up with a win at home vs. the Hawks and it is a done deal...not saying we can go perfect in our division but if we win 4of the 5 remaining division games (sweep at home lose in either Seattle or St. Louis) and the division is ours

 

[40yearfan]

Not trying to be a pessimist or anything, but the last time we went 4-2 to start a season, we ended 5-11.

Let's take it one game at a time, let the bye week heal our warrior's wounds and take it to Carolina. I will feel much much more confident if our guys can get it done on the road against a quality opponent.

That team bears no resemblance to this team what-so-ever. The current personnel are much better and remarkably, our depth players are much better than even the starters on that team.

We need to get over looking at the bad history of this team. Step into the future and never look back. Thanks to DG, Whis, RG and MB, we can now call ourselves a professional football team.

 

[Russ Smith]

I agree with you completely. This team is far superior than the 2002 team. We lost our top 4 WRs that season so we were starting pratice squad scrubs.

I just don't want people to get too far ahead of themselves. This team is playing well, but the main issue remains that we still haven't proven that we can duplicate those results on the road. That is why I am reserving judgement until the Carolina game, when we play a quality NFC opponent on their turf. Beat them and I'll gladly hook myself up to the kool-aid pump.

Absolutely we will learn tons about this team in Carolina.

 

[Totally_Red]

I agree with you completely. This team is far superior than the 2002 team. We lost our top 4 WRs that season so we were starting pratice squad scrubs.

I just don't want people to get too far ahead of themselves. This team is playing well, but the main issue remains that we still haven't proven that we can duplicate those results on the road. That is why I am reserving judgement until the Carolina game, when we play a quality NFC opponent on their turf. Beat them and I'll gladly hook myself up to the kool-aid pump.

Agree. We lost to a lesser Carolina team at home last year(granted Kurt was knocked out of the game). Let's see what we do on the road against an improved Panther team. If "good Kurt" shows up and the resurgent defense shuts down the Panther ground game, I like our chances.

 

[gusmahler]

Football Outsiders has a feature where they run each of the remaining games 10,000 times and predict the results of each based on how the teams have performed so far this season:

http://footballoutsiders.com/stats/playoffodds

The result is that the Cards have a 96.6% chance of winning the Division. A 96.8% total chance of making the playoffs. Further extrapolating, they give us a 33.0% chance of making the NFC Championship game, a 15.7% chance of winning the NFC Championship, and a 8.3% chance of winning the Super Bowl.

We also have the 3rd most number of predicted wins (10.3), behind only Tennessee (11.6 wins) and Tampa Bay (10.5).

They also have STL (4.6) winning more games than SEA (4.5).

 

[DoTheDew]

I like the way our schedule is the rest of the season. The only "gimme" games are division games so the chance of a let down game is reduced. 11-5 doesn't seem out of the question to me.

 

[82CardsGrad]

I don't have the time to check, but when was the last time a Wild Card came from the West?? Seems like ages to me... The only way a NFC Western Division team will ever make the playoffs is to win the division...

 

[gusmahler]

I don't have the time to check, but when was the last time a Wild Card came from the West?? Seems like ages to me... The only way a NFC Western Division team will ever make the playoffs is to win the division...

2004, the Rams were the wild card while the Seahawks won the division.

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2004/