Five Pro Bowlers most since 1977 for Cards

In this year’s quest for more positive notoriety around Cardinals camp, another such nugget came the team’s way on Tuesday afternoon, this time in the form of Pro Bowl selections.

Manning brothers going to Pro Bowl

When it comes to honoring the NFL’s best, a winning record and first division title in 23 seasons did the Cardinals good. Arizona will send five players — quarterback Kurt Warner, receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin, safety Adrian Wilson and special-teams ace Sean Morey — to Hawaii on Feb. 8.

Arizona hadn’t had more than two representatives since 1996, and not since the 1977 St. Louis Cardinals (seven) have this many Redbirds gone to the All-Star showcase.

Only Minnesota and the New York Giants will send more NFC delegates this season.

Gaudy numbers alone don’t always work, but compiling those stats on a winning team does.

At 8-6, the Cardinals were looking for some good news following a 35-14 clunker against the Vikings. It didn’t take out all the sting from Sunday, but some is better than none.

“A lot of times, people want to point out the flaws and faults of the Cardinals, and the one thing they don’t seem to realize is the improvement and respect other teams have for us and the progress we’ve made,” Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt said. “This is an indication of that.”

KURT WARNER

During the first installment of Kurt Warner’s NFL career, a trip to Hawaii was part of the package from 1999-2001, but not since.

“So there came a point I had to tell them (his family) our vacations in Hawaii were stopping,” Warner said Tuesday. “We weren’t doing that every year.”

Seven years, two teams and a couple benchings later, he’ll be back. But with seven kids?

“I’m sure they’re not going to want us to go without them,” he said. “We’ll have to play it by ear. My wife and I would love a weeklong vacation in Hawaii by ourselves, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.”

With a running game ranked 32nd in the league, Warner has seven games of 300 yards passing and is on pace for 4,902 yards, which would be the second-highest total in NFL history behind Dan Marino’s 5,084 in 1984.

The sixth quarterback in franchise history to be a Pro Bowler, his seven-year gap in appearances is the second-longest in NFL history (Randall Cunningham and Phil Simms each went eight years).

“I felt coming in I could play QB for this team as well as anyone in the league,” Warner said. “That’s really what I felt coming in. Whether that means a Pro Bowl or certain stats, I never had that perspective. I felt I could play this game as well I ever have, and I felt like I’ve done that this year.”

SEAN MOREY

Following three stints in NFL Europe, Sean Morey had 28 tackles and was MVP of the top special-teams unit in the NFL with Philadelphia in 2003, but didn’t make the Pro Bowl.

He feels he’s paid his dues. Morey was a Pro Bowl alternate in 2005 before he eventually followed Whisenhunt from Pittsburgh to Arizona in 2007, his fourth team in seven years, almost exclusively in special-teams duty.

Before then, his wife also put aside her Olympic medal dreams in hockey so Morey could play football, and he found his first Pro Bowl selection as validation for his wife’s athletic sacrifice.

“I don’t want to say it’s the underdog story, but it’s the guy you always root for,” Whisenhunt said. “Maybe we’ll start calling him 'Rudy.’ ”

Further proof that even the accolades can be difficult to accept: Morey’s third daughter is expected to arrive during Pro Bowl week.

“Brenda Warner said you just take your doctor with you,” Morey said. “I’m not sure I should be taking my doctor and his staff to Hawaii, but it was a good idea. We’ll have to talk about it.”

ANQUAN BOLDIN

For obvious reasons, the Pro Bowl wasn’t part of Anquan Boldin’s thought process as he laid on a stretcher in the Meadowlands in New Jersey while being taken to the hospital with a fractured jaw.

“I didn’t even give it a thought,” he said. “My whole goal this season was get to the playoffs. That was my main focus and reason I came back off the injury so early, was to help my team get in position to win the division.”

Despite missing two games, Boldin leads the NFC with 89 receptions and 1,038 yards, plus a career-high 11 touchdowns.

This is Boldin’s third trip to the Pro Bowl — “You can never downplay that,” he said — since being a second-round pick by the team in 2003.

But similar to Adrian Wilson, never with this many teammates. And never with this much still at stake this late in a season.

“The best part about this year is you have a lot more (teammates) to go with you,” he said. “Us being able to get to the playoffs this year, there’s a lot more sense of pride and joy in it than past years, having losing seasons and I might be the only one voted into the Pro Bowl.”

LARRY FITZGERALD

Across from Boldin will be Larry Fitzgerald, the first Cardinal to go in consecutive seasons since Aeneas Williams (1998-99).

That means the Cardinals will have the starting quarterback and receivers for the first time since the AFC-NFC Pro Bowl began in 1970.

“That’s a product of it happening this year,” Fitzgerald said of winning as he paused between snapping photos.

Though an honor, Fitzgerald didn’t jump for joy over his third selection.

He was still bothered by Sunday.

“I think we all would have had a better taste if we took care of business,” he said.

ADRIAN WILSON

Adrian Wilson credited teammates and spoke of the impending playoffs and how difficult the offseason was while returning to health following a season-ending heel injury in November 2007.

Those, he says, were his validations.

“It really gave me a chance to look back at myself and the things I could do better,” he said. “I kind of said all offseason there were a lot of things I could improve upon, not just on the football field — off the field and being the better teammate and trying to eliminate some of the individual focus I had on myself and focus on the team. I think that’s helped me out this year, being there for teammates during the course of the game. Overall, I think it always boils back to the team and how it’s doing.”

While the longest-tenured Cardinal (eight seasons) made the Pro Bowl in 2006, he’ll continue to wear jersey No. 2 every day in practice.

“I think this year is more team-oriented because we won the division and are in the playoffs,” he said. “The work’s not done. There’s still a lot of work to do.”