I'm sure they've spent their bye week working incredibly hard, but as the Seattle Seahawks and the Arizona Cardinals were pummeled into submission in some of the worst ways imaginable I was struck by the indelible mental image of the St. Louis Rams lying in a hammock, being fed grapes one at a time by Egyptian slaves. A vizier walks up the steps of the palace and says—"Sir, emissaries from Arizona and Seattle have arrived. We're being presented with first place in the NFC West."
↵Rampage turns his giant mascot head lazily toward the vizier and says—"Fine. Send them away."
↵The Cardinals made their offering first. After picking up a half-fluky 24-10 lead against the snake-bitten Minnesota Vikings they were the unwilling recipients of this year's first instance of Brett Favre Just Having Fun Out There. He's not afraid to come back from two touchdowns down and suddenly look like Brett Favre again—you gotta respect that. As they say.
↵The Seahawks, sensing the Cardinals had curried a lot of favor with their overtime loss, proceeded to get pounded by 41-7 by Eli Manning and the New York Giants. There wasn't much to be done about this one—Manning looked perfect, and the Seahawks were without Matt Hasselbeck. Their backup, Charlie Whitehurst, hadn't played in an NFL game since 2006. Things went about as expected.
↵Next week the Rams will have some control over their own destiny—they'll face off against the 2-6 San Francisco 49ers, who were also off last week, although they presumably were fed fewer grapes. The Seattle Seahawks and the Arizona Cardinals will each look to recover from their own tough loss when they face off in Glendale.
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