SI picks Cardinals to win the Super Bowl as Larry Fitzgerald graces regional cover

Arizona Cardinals fans can’t get enough of Larry Fitzgerald, and neither can Sports Illustrated.

Fitzgerald will be featured on one of four regional covers of the magazine’s NFL preview issue, which is set to be released Wednesday. It marks his sixth cover appearance for SI, with this one titled “Desert Feat: Larry Fitzgerald and the Cardinals Will Feel the Glow of their First Super Bowl Win.”

In this issue of the magazine, SI’s Greg Bedard picks the Cardinals to win Super Bowl LI over the Pittsburgh Steelers 40-37.

I’m willing to bet that Palmer (who hadn’t played a postseason game in six years before last January) and Arians (who in the playoffs saw the downside of his rigid “no risk-it, no biscuit” approach) learned a lot from last year’s bitter ending and can apply those lessons moving forward. If this team is healthy and has grown from its mistakes, the Cardinals are fully capable of winning it all, even if it means entering January as a wild-card team and visiting Dallas, Seattle and Green Bay.

In an Arizona-Pittsburgh rematch of Super Bowl XLIII, the Cardinals’ dangerous running game and stifling secondary will slow down the Steelers enough to grab a dramatic victory. How about a Larry Fitzgerald toe-touch TD in the back-right corner of the NRG Stadium end zone to match Santonio Holmes’s heroics eight years earlier, in Tampa? Sounds good to me.

All four regional editions will get the same prediction of a Cardinals’ Super Bowl victory, but all four won’t have the same cover. Cam Newton of Carolina, Denver’s Von Miller and Antonio Brown of Pittsburgh are featured on the other regional covers.

The last time a Cardinals player found its way on the SI cover was this past January, when Fitzgerald was on it following his team’s victory in the NFC Divisional round over the Green Bay Packers.

Other Cardinals players who once graced the SI magazine cover were Kurt Warner, John Brown and Pat Tillman.