Seahawks | All those old jokes don't fit '07 Cardinals

A 6-6 record might not be much to celebrate in many football towns.

Seattle, a frequent playoff participant in recent years, for one.

But the Valley of the Sun is Cardinals-crazy these days.

Well, maybe not quite. The Cardinals have been so up and down — victories over winning teams like Seattle, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, but a pair of crushing home defeats to lowly San Francisco and Carolina — that some fans aren't jumping on the bandwagon just yet.

"I think our fans ... want to see us have a little success first," said Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt. "Our players are excited and I think that, just based on last Sunday, our fans are very excited, too, that we're in this at this time of year."

Here are the Cardinals, 27-21 winners at home last weekend against Cleveland, with their best record after 12 games since 1999 when they also were 6-6. It's a team that comes to Seattle this Sunday with eight consecutive losing seasons and its fourth head coach in that span.

"You're talking about a team that is playing a meaningful game in the second week of December," said Ron Wolfley, the team's radio broadcast analyst and a Cardinals player from 1985 to 1991. "That hasn't happened around here in quite a while."

Arizona is in a three-way tie for the second spot in the NFC wild-card race with Detroit and Minnesota, and a victory Sunday would give the Cardinals a winning record this late in the season for the first time since 1988.

There is further to go, but this is quite an accomplishment coming from where the Cardinals have been.

Before 2006, Cardinals games at Sun Devil Stadium were a joke. There was no home-field advantage playing in a rented college stadium, where the temperatures in September would soar to 100 degrees or more with little relief from the sun and heat.

The Cardinals on local television? Not when they consistently struggled to sell half the seats in the stadium.

Wolfley remembers a game in which the Cardinals were getting pounded by the Denver Broncos at home, and there were so many Broncos fans remaining in Sun Devil Stadium in the fourth quarter that they did The Wave.

Not so anymore. Arizona has a new home, University of Phoenix Stadium, awash in red and packed with Cardinals fans eager to celebrate the modest success of a franchise that for most of its history in the Phoenix area has been synonymous with losing and ineptness.

"You're starting to feel a little excitement, a little more energy in the stadium and around town because we are still involved," quarterback Kurt Warner said.

The Cardinals are the 2007 Kings of Close. Nine of their 12 games have been decided by seven points or less. Four of their defeats came down to one play.

"If we had a couple of kicks go through, we'd be sitting here with a little bit different record and then we'd really be talking about another thing," Whisenhunt said. "We're just excited to have an opportunity for this game to mean something."

Wolfley said he believes Whisenhunt has been the difference.

"A football team tends to take on the personality of its coach, and I think that's exactly what this Arizona Cardinals team has done," he said.

Warner leads an offense that is full of weapons when everyone is healthy. Wide receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin are injured, though, and there's a chance neither will play.

The offensive line has enjoyed a resurgence under position coach Russ Grimm. Whisenhunt favors the run, but isn't afraid to try some play-calling trickery.

Defensively, the Arizona secondary has four interceptions returned for touchdowns. The Cardinals are hanging tough even without their two best defensive players, safety Adrian Wilson and defensive end Bertrand Berry, who are out for the season.

"They're doing a nice job this year, Arizona," Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said. "It's one of those division games at the end of the year that are special."

Who would have thought the Cardinals would even be playing a big game at this time of the season? After all, this is the same franchise that only last season blew its big chance to beat the eventual NFC champion Chicago Bears on its first "Monday Night Football" appearance in seven years when streaky kicker Neil Rackers missed a 40-yard field goal in the closing seconds and prompted former coach Dennis Green's famous postgame "They are who we thought they were!" rant.

This year, the Cardinals are not who we thought they were.

"It's going to be one of those games," Cardinals defensive tackle Darnell Dockett told the East Valley Tribune. "Ya'll wouldn't want to miss it."

José Miguel Romero: 206-464-2409 or jromero@seattletimes.com