Vikings, Packers or Redskins? Cardinals have little preference of opponent

On January 16, the Arizona Cardinals will host the Minnesota Vikings. Or the Green Bay Packers. Or the Washington Redskins.

BY ADAM GREEN

Jan 7, 2016, 2:47 PM

Follow on Google News

Related No doubt about it: Kedrick Reescano makes his case in Arizona’s season openerWild Card st...

TEMPE, Ariz. — On January 16, the Arizona Cardinals will host the Minnesota Vikings. Or the Green Bay Packers. Or the Washington Redskins.

Part of the benefit of earning one of the conference’s top two playoff seeds is being guaranteed to host at least one game, and the other is having a bye week to rest up and prepare.

The thing is, there’s no real way to know who you are preparing for.

Wednesday, the Cards focused on the Packers, with Thursday and Friday being reserved for the Vikings and Redskins, respectively.

Two of them — the Vikings and Packers — were opponents this season, with the Cardinals beating each of them at University of Phoenix Stadium. Arizona did not face the Redskins this season, but did knock them off last season in Glendale.

The Cardinals will be favored to beat whoever they face, but might they have a preference as to which team comes to town next week?

“Only because we haven’t played them, I’d like the opportunity to play against the Redskins for sure, just because we haven’t played them,” quarterback Carson Palmer said. “All three are going to be difficult for completely different reasons.

“Minnesota will be more healthy this time. They were banged up the last time we played them. Green Bay will probably be more healthy on the other side of the ball. Just from the mere fact that I’m studying Washington right now, don’t have the experience of playing them other than last year, but it doesn’t matter. We’re excited to play whoever it may be.”

The Cardinals will face off with the highest seed remaining after the Wild Card round. If chalk held, that would be the Vikings, but they are underdogs against the No. 6 seed Seattle Seahawks. If Seattle earns the road win as many seem to expect, then Arizona will host the winner of the Washington vs. Green Bay matchup.

The Vikings won 11 games this season, the Packers 10 and the Redskins nine.

The idea that facing Minnesota or Green Bay would be advantageous to the Cardinals since they’ve already game-planned for them this season could hold water, yet at the same time, those same teams have done the same for the Cardinals, so it could be a moot point.

Defensive lineman Calais Campbell said what they did for those teams is still fresh in their mind, as is much of what they did last season for Washington.

“You’ve got to study our film and see how they tried to attack us because it’s hard to attack us because it’s hard to find people that run the defense we run,” he said. “So it’s good to be able to see film on them facing us.”

That said, Campbell added the playoffs are different from the regular season, so what happened in the past may not show much of value for what’s happening next.

And even if players had a preference for who they would like to play — they are human, after all, and probably view some teams as being a greater challenge that others — there would be little to gain from making that public.

The phrase, “be careful what you wish for” comes to mind.

So even though this season the Cardinals beat the Vikings 23-20 in a very close game and the Packers 38-8 in a rout, and last season knocked off the Reskins 30-20, the idea that they will be watching this weekend’s games with the hopes of one team winning is, shall we say, not particularly likely.

“Anybody you play at this point, they earned the right to be in the dance,” receiver Larry Fitzgerald said. “They’ve won a game to get to you, too, so you know they’re tested — they’ve been tested against another good football team.”

The Cardinals will know their opponent by Sunday evening. No matter who it is, one advantage they will have is they will be well rested, whereas the team they face will have a short week of preparation.

If you’re looking for an edge, that may very well be it. Or, perhaps, the edge would simply be the Cardinals are, in theory, better than any of the three teams they could face.

That’s why, as the Cardinals head into the weekend, they do so with very little care as to what happens, at least with regards to who they will play when they next take the field.

“No preference; it doesn’t matter,” linebacker Dwight Freeney said. “It’s not about them, it’s about us. We have that mentality around here and it’s a good mentality to have.

“If we do the things that we need to do, I don’t care who comes in here.”