The most futile franchise in the sport’s history had one magical January, and it nearly ended in a trophy. The 2008 Cardinals, a team nobody took seriously, caught fire in the postseason behind Kurt Warner, won three games to reach the Super Bowl, and came within thirty-five seconds of winning it. For a franchise that had waited longer than any other, that run was a small miracle.

The longest wait there ever was

No team has waited like the Cardinals. They once went fifty years without winning a single playoff game, the longest such drought in league history, finally breaking it in 1998. This is the oldest continuously run franchise in the sport, and for most of that history January was simply not a place it visited. The 2008 run stands almost alone.

A flicker and a fade

There was another good team after the 2015 season that reached the NFC Championship Game and got blown out. Beyond that it has mostly been quiet, long stretches outside the playoffs, the 2008 run shining brighter the further it recedes. A franchise still waiting for its second great January.

A fifty-year drought, one storied run to the brink of a title, and not much else in the book. Cardinals fans, your franchise has waited longer than anyone, and that 2008 team gave you the month of a lifetime before the cruelest possible finish. From a man who knows about thirty-five seconds going wrong, that one I feel in my bones.