Phoenix

The one NFL title the club can point to unambiguously came in 1947, when the Chicago Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Eagles for the championship under player-coach Jimmy Conzelman. The closest the franchise has come in the modern era was the 2008 season, when Kurt Warner dragged the team through the NFC playoffs and into Super Bowl XLIII, where the Pittsburgh Steelers won it back with a late touchdown, 27–23.

The name has changed more often than the trophy case has filled. The team started out in 1898 as the Morgan Athletic Club on Chicago's South Side, became the Racine Cardinals in 1901 after its owner bought a batch of faded maroon jerseys from the University of Chicago and decided the colour looked more cardinal red than anything else, then Chicago Cardinals in 1922. A 1944 wartime shortage of players forced a merger with the Pittsburgh Steelers into the short-lived "Card-Pitt." St. Louis took the franchise in 1960, and Arizona finally got it in 1988, first as the Phoenix Cardinals, then, from 1994, under the current name.

Larry Fitzgerald spent his whole career with the club and left with his number 11 retired, a rarer thing in Arizona than the trophies would suggest. Pat Tillman's name carries different weight: he walked away from a playing contract to enlist after 11 September, and the Cardinals now keep his number in their Ring of Honor rather than on a roster.

The Cardinals–Rams rivalry survives even with the Rams long gone from St. Louis to Los Angeles. Mike LaFleur took over as head coach, with the NFC West still the target.