Cards look up at big-market Giants

In the last three seasons, the Cardinals have played in six postseason games, winning four of them and losing only to the Steelers in the Super Bowl and to the eventual champion Saints in a divisional game. During that same time, the Giants have played in only one playoff game, and they lost it.

Yet when the Giants show up in Glendale for Sunday's game, it will be the Cardinals feeling as if they get no respect.

"We're talking about the New York football Giants, so you see them every single week," Arizona receiver Larry Fitzgerald said this past week. "It is not like playing in Arizona where you are off in obscurity."

Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt echoed that perspective.

"Whenever you play a team like the Giants that has been so successful . . . and comes from a big market, our guys get up for that," he said. "I don't feel like we're a small-market team. We have good fan support in this area. But we're not New York. There's no market like New York."

Antrel Rolle knew that when he was playing for the Cardinals, and he admitted that is one of the reasons he now plays for the Giants. Just before the free-agency period in the spring of 2010, the Cardinals released Rolle, who was due $17 million for the 2010 season, with the hopes of re-signing him at a more manageable price. Instead, Rolle decided he needed a change in scenery and signed with the Giants.

They made him the highest-paid safety in the league, but they also offered him something he never could have gotten in Arizona: exposure.

"I wouldn't say that was a primary reason for my decision, but it's definitely something I thought of," Rolle said. "You definitely feel out of the loop a little bit [in Arizona] when you're talking about the teams that get a lot of broadcasts and a lot of media like Dallas and New York."

Unlike Rolle, who bolted for the bright lights, Fitzgerald decided to stay in the dry heat. He signed an eight-year contract this summer worth a reported $120 million, $50 million guaranteed, essentially making him a Cardinal for life. Fitzgerald said he has spoken with Rolle, with whom he has a close relationship, about their directions.

"He did what he thought was best for his career at that point," Fitzgerald said. "He has done very well and has had opportunities to play on a really good football team that is competing for a playoff position every year in the NFC East. He made that decision based on what was best for him. What was best for me, I felt, was to stay here and be a part of this community and this team and try to recruit other guys to come and be a part of it . . . "

To do that, the Cardinals will have to win. They slipped to 5-11 last season and are 1-2 this year after their blip of postseason success.

"When I came out here, we were in the cellar," Fitzgerald said. "I saw us go to the Super Bowl a few years ago, so it is much more gratifying to be a part of something from the very beginning and build it and be a part of the foundation that turned it around. I feel we have the core guys along with the coaching staff that we can get it turned around here. It is just us believing in each other and turning that corner."

And maybe trying to get the rest of the country to notice. A win over the big-city Giants certainly would help that cause.