Cardinals Win Game but Pay a Price : They Beat Giants to Tie for Lead, but Lose Lomax

From one viewpoint, this was no more than a momentary setback for the New York Giants. Their schedule is so weak this year that they’ll doubtless be in it at the end next month.

But from a larger point of view, this was the game that made the Phoenix Cardinals a respectable contender in the National Football League after too many bad seasons in St. Louis, from which they fled a few months ago.

As Phoenix quarterback Neil Lomax outplayed the surprisingly listless New York defense, the Cardinals led most of the way and moved into a first-place tie with the Giants Sunday when they held on to win, 24-17, before a crowd of 65,724 in sunny Sun Devil Stadium.

“We’re starting (the season) all over again next week in the NFC East,” Giants Coach Bill Parcells said later, noting that the Cardinals and Giants both stand 7-4, a game up on Washington and Philadelphia, both 6-5.

However, the game ended on a sour note for Phoenix when Lomax limped off with a knee injury. The doctors said he could miss three or four starts with a partial ligament tear.

Walking into the locker room with his leg encased in a heavy, ankle-to-thigh cast, Lomax said he thought Giant lineman Jim Burt bumped the knee two plays before he threw the game-winning touchdown pass to Cardinal wide receiver Roy Green.

On that 44-yard play, Green fielded Lomax’s short pass on third and 18 and gained most of the yards with a circuitous broken-field run to put Phoenix in an insurmountable lead, 21-7.

First to last it was a catch-up kind of day for Giant quarterback Phil Simms, who never quite got there after Lomax drove the Cardinals ahead in the first quarter, 14-0, scoring a touchdown himself on a broken play.

As usual, the Cardinals that time dominated the Giants’ defensive front so thoroughly that the 29-year-old quarterback could make a 1-yard run with ease even though his offensive line was blocking for another play.

“We never let them get back in the game,” Lomax said.

And so the Cardinals are starting to play together in their third year with Coach Gene Stallings, who suffered through a 4-11-1 season in 1986 and left St. Louis 11-19-1.

A rebuilding NFL team usually does it this way when it has the right coach:

--It slowly becomes competitive, as the Cardinals finally did last year.

--But it continues to lose its big games, as the Cardinals also did last season, when their 7-8 team would have made the playoffs if it had won its final game against Dallas.

--Then it begins to win its big games, as the Cardinals did Sunday, when they made four impressive defensive stands against the 1986 Super Bowl champions.

In the first quarter when Simms stood third and 9 at the Phoenix 23-yard line, Cardinal lineman Freddie Joe Nunn rushed him into an incomplete pass on the play before a missed Giant field goal.

On the first play of the second quarter, when Parcells gambled with a third-and-1 pass at midfield, Cardinal cornerman Cedric Mack, who wasn’t fooled, threw a blanket around the Giant receiver, Stephen Baker.

Finally, in the third quarter, the Cardinals twice overcame unlucky adverse situations in what was good field position for the Giants, first on a tipped-pass interception at the Phoenix 45, then on a non-punt at the Phoenix 36 when Cardinal punter Greg Horne dropped the snap.

Last year’s Cardinals might have folded in that adversity. But this year, Stallings has them believing. They’re getting to be as confident as he is.

“When we’re healthy, we’re tough enough now to hold our own with anybody,” Stallings said after the game.

His main problem now that he has turned things around, seemingly, is that his team is growing old on him--old and ailing. Even before Lomax’s new injury, the question was whether the indispensable quarterback could finish the season with his arthritic hip.

The Cardinals are now hoping for the best with backup quarterback Cliff Stoudt, who got a save in this game with a strong fourth quarter, but who, in a sense, personifies Stallings’ team. Stoudt is 33 years old.

George Allen used to love old teams, but this is a different era.