Monday Night Football preview: A "Battle" for "Supremacy" of the NFC "West"!

As we approach the end of the regular season, non-playoff people (that includes Footballz Talk, since MNF ends before the playoffs, and we would not want to pollute the great import of the Second Season with our blatherings) begin to reflect on what has transpired over these past 14 weeks. This even includes football television producers. I can see in my mind now, sometime in early April, the Monday Night Football team sitting down over (let's say) Chinese to talk about the schedule and feeling pretty good about themselves. The games for the most part have been good (with one notable exception), the announcing team hasn't been too embarrassing (although we all know a little too well what is in this dude's vault), and nobody has gotten upset about the intro that exploits bronzeface. Unfortunately the end of the season is a bete noir for schedule-makers everywhere. There is no real way of predicting how the season will turn out, who will be surprisingly good (yeah!) and who will underwhelm (ha-ha).

That brings us to this week's matchup, The Defending NFC Champion Arizona Cardinals vs. The San Francisco 49ers. When looking at this game in the off-season, I am sure it looked like this would be a showdown for the NFC West title. (Which is something worth having, despite what the press might tell you, since fully half of the last four Super Bowls have involved the NFC West Champions. Take that, East Coast Sports Media Establishment!) When this match was promoted to Monday Night, the Cardnals had been just a couple of toes from taking the Super Bowl, and the Niners had finished strong with a dynamic (pants droppingly so) new head coach. These, of course, would be the rising powers of the West for years to come.

The suits at ESPN turned out to be only half right. The Cardnals are good -- very good -- but the Niners are a different story.

The Cardnals are a juggernaut when they have the ball. A rejuvenated Kurt Warner (perhaps his powers come from his wife/frilled demon/soup saleswoman?) throws to the best receivers in football: so-good-he-requires-no-nickname Larry Fitzgerald and Dr. Brokenface Anquan Boldin. (Please to not get Brokenface confused with this. Also, I'm sorry.) And they just trashed the Vikings last week. (Bret Favre, Ya burnt).

The Niners have been a bit of a disappointment. They've flip-flopped quarterbacks, gone away from their bread-and-butter running game, and not even Mike Singletary's giant cross necklace can help. (The coincidence of perhaps the most faith-heavy coach in the NFL plying his wares in San Francisco is pretty awesome. For a next step in GLBT/football/faith reconciliation: can we get Tony Dungy to move his football camp to P-Town?) This game will not be an epic showdown for playoff position, but hopefully it will be such a blowout that Matt Leinart will get into the game and we can talk about this and this. 

Foot Ballz Talk is a live internet broadcast in which "two guys talk about football during a Monday night and play records." It is produced by Mac and TD (familiar to fans of the musical endeavors Big Digits and Bodega Girls), and has been described by us (not by them) as "Mystery Pigskin Theater 3000." Each Monday, we'll publish the FBT preview of that night's contest. You can listen to Foot Ballz Talk on the internet, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.