Unheralded Spach making name for himself

He’s made only five catches for the Cardinals this season.

At midseason, he was unemployed, sitting at a tire store in California, far from the high-drama world of the NFL playoffs.

Cards notebook: Team says it'll be different this time in N.C.

Bordow: Cards' D-line will have to man up vs. Panthers

But here he is now, coming off a game-clinching catch on a third-and-16 play to wrap up the Cardinals’ first home playoff win in 61 seasons.

Yes, Stephen Spach is the sort of story that makes sports fun.

He was picked up off the street -- er, from the tire store while waiting for service on his vehicle -- when the Cardinals came calling to try to bolster the team’s sagging tight end position. (New England had released him a month earlier).

Spach worked his way into the starting lineup, though he caught only two passes in the regular season (previously, he’d caught seven career passes, all for Philadelphia in 2005).

But in Saturday’s 30-24 wild-card playoff victory over Atlanta, he caught three passes, including the biggest one of his career.

Around the time of his visit to the tire store, he must have been thinking over his career options.

“You always keep hope,” Spach said. “But you never know what’s going to happen when you get cut.

“Sometimes those thoughts go through your mind. Is this it? What am I going to do next? You never know what the future holds. I was just trying to keep my head up, keep my body in shape and hope for the best.”

Spach had gone through a workout a few weeks earlier with the Cardinals, so it wasn’t a shock that he got that call before the Cards’ game at St. Louis on Nov. 2.

But nobody, certainly not the Falcons, expected him to be the guy to make the game-clinching catch on Saturday.

Here’s how the play set up.

The Cardinals had run a draw a couple of times out of the same formation in which they lined up on 3rd-and-16 with about 2:00 left.

The traditional conservative move in such situations is to run the ball for a few yards, take time off the clock, punt and trust the defense.

But the Cardinals looked to put the game away.

So Kurt Warner faked a handoff to Edgerrin James.

“It seemed to suck the linebackers in. We’d also been running the ball pretty well,“ Spach said. “Given the situation, it worked out pretty well.

“The safety seemed to go with the wide receiver out on the right. It cleared the middle of the field.”

More or less, the play worked perfectly, almost like running a play in a light practice with nobody trying to defend.

“I knew I had the first down by the time I was tackled, Spach said. “I knew that locked up the game.”

And it made a name for himself with NFL fans throughout the country.

Surely, this play purchased Spach another year in the NFL.

“I don’t know,” Spach said. “I just know it bought us another week. Now we have a good chance to go out and get another win.”