Cardinals ranked fifth-worst in CBS Sports’ all-time NFL power rankings
Jun 30, 2015, 9:38 AM | Updated: 9:39 am
For all intents and purposes, the Arizona Cardinals have been a respectable team of late.
Bruce Arians has coached the Cards to consecutive winning seasons. They’ve been to the playoffs three times in the past seven years, including making it to Super Bowl XLIII.
Still, the many years of four, five, even a few one-win seasons tend to hurt any all-time rankings for the Cards. Such is the case for Brad Gagnon’s all-time power rankings of the Super Bowl Era, where the Cardinals showed up at No. 28.
The rankings were based on Super Bowl wins (10 points each), Super Bowl losses (5 points each), Hall of Famers (3 points each), division titles (1 point each) and all-time winning percentage where points are the reserve of their Super Bowl-era ranking.
The Dallas Cowboys took the top spot with 164 points, narrowly beating the Pittsburgh Steelers, who racked up 161 points. The worst team all-time went to the Houston Texans, who tallied just 11 points.
The Cardinals finished with 29 points, the strong majority of those coming from their five Hall of Fame members.
To the Cards’ credit, they fare well with Hall of Famers during the modern era (Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith, Roger Wehrli, Aeneas Williams, Larry Wilson). The problem is that they’re one of eight original Super Bowl-era franchises without a title and they’ve won their division only five times in nearly half a century.
To bring things back to present day, the 2015 Cardinals are sixth in Pete Prisco’s power rankings, also found on CBS Sports.
