Arizona Cardinals 3 Point Road Dogs At Seattle Seahawks On Sunday

NFL News - October 13th, 2009 - Written by John

The Seattle Seahawks are clearly a better team with Matt Hasselbeck under center. For some reason, the team just comes together and shuts down their opponent. In the three games he has missed, they are 0-3 and have been outscored 82-46. With him, however, Seattle has won by a combined 69-0, shutting out both the St. Louis Rams and the Jacksonville Jaguars. He played a big part in last week's 41-0 mauling of Jacksonville, in which the two-time Pro Bowler threw for 241 yards and four touchdowns, one more than back-up Seneca Wallace has all season.

As long as he is in the lineup, the Seattle Seahawks appear to be contenders in the NFC West, with wanting performances from St. Louis, San Francisco and Arizona last week. The latter team will be in their way this week when the Seahawks host the Cardinals at Qwest Field.

The Seahawks get the edge on BetUS Sportsbook with a line of (-3) with Hasselbeck seemingly healthy. But oddsmakers are sending mixed signals on this one. If you take the favored Seahawks with the points, you net a payout of +105, while taking the Cardinals plus-3 will return -125. So it's somewhat of a give-and-take bet. But that changes dramatically on a moneyline bet, where the Cardinals return at +120 and the Seahawks payout -140.

The over/under is 47 and it's important to note that the last 10 times these teams met, they hit the over in eight. Seattle is 8-1 in their last nine as home favorite.

The Arizona Cardinals have been somewhat of an enigma on offense this year, and never was it more apparent than last week against the Texans. Sure, they won and are now 2-2, but they were ahead early in the game and seemed to take their foot off the gas too quickly. Kurt Warner completed 20 passes for 262 yards in the first half, but only connected six more times in the second for 40 yards. Larry Fitzgerald caught two touchdown passes in the final 1:44 of the first frame, but was only targeted --- times after that.

As a team, the Cardinals had 18 first half first downs, but only one more in the second. Houston managed to get back in it with two scores by receiver Andre Johnson and the Cardinals needed a late interception return by Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie.

It is somewhat troublesome, but is something the team will have to avoid when they play a potent offense in Seattle.

Check out the rest of the Week 6 NFL Game Previews for all of this Sunday's games.

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