Momentum might carry Arizona past New Orleans

Breaking down the Arizona-New Orleans matchup in the NFC divisional playoffs:

Rest or rust

Whereas the Cardinals will be six days removed from a dramatic overtime victory over Green Bay, the Saints will not have won in five weeks. New Orleans was far from its best down the stretch, and also rested players in the season finale.

Saints Coach Sean Payton believes there are no clear statistical data about what’s best to do, rest starters or play them all the way across the regular-season finish line. He does know this, though -- late in the season, the Saints had 18 players on their injury report. This week, they had only four, and two of those are merely precautionary. The Saints are as healthy as they’ve been since the start of training camp.

Fitz to be tied

Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald is a big concern for the Saints, as he should be. But New Orleans has done a good job on marquee receivers this season, putting the clamps on New England’s Randy Moss and Wes Welker (a combined nine catches, but for only 99 yards and no touchdowns), Buffalo’s Terrell Owens (zero catches for the first time in 185 games), and Detroit’s Calvin Johnson (a 64-yard catch, but against a rookie corner pressed into duty because of an injury).

Watch for Gregg Williams, the Saints’ defensive coordinator, to cover Fitzgerald man to man underneath, while shadowing him with a safety over the top. That gets trickier if Arizona’s Anquan Boldin is ready to return from injury.

The Saints probably won’t do a lot of blitzing of Kurt Warner. They know how dangerous he can be in those situations. They’ll let their front four come after him, and let their defensive backs do their jobs in coverage.

Handyman

Reggie Bush might not be an ideal every-down back, but he’s still very dangerous when used the right way. The Saints have been very effective in the way they’ve utilized him lately, frequently having him run out of three-receiver sets when there are a lot of smaller defensive players on the field.

How will the Cardinals combat that? They might need to use an extra cornerback. There isn’t a linebacker fast enough to stick with him, and Arizona’s safeties are big hitters who are better in run support than coverage.

Four Ks in Kurt

Arizona quarterback Warner isn’t speedy. He sure is fast, though, needing only 253 yards passing for 4,000 in his post-season career. If he were to hit that milestone Saturday, he would have reached it in 13 playoff appearances, sooner than any player in NFL history. Warner has 3,747 yards passing in 12 postseason games. The quarterbacks to reach 4,000 yards passing in the postseason in the fewest games:

Quarterbacks	Games
Peyton Manning	15
Dan Marino	16
Brett Favre	17
Joe Montana	17
Tom Brady	18
John Elway	18

Another viewpoint

Fox’s Jimmy Johnson on Arizona: “I’m the one who early in the season stuck a fork in them. The reason I thought they would struggle is Ken [Whisenhunt] at the beginning of the season lost his coordinators, had a quarterback that was up there in years, had Boldin who was not 100% healthy and had some contract issues. I saw some black clouds in the sky. Then, they came on and played outstanding. They ended up a better football team this year than when they went to the Super Bowl.”

Farmer’s pick

New Orleans has shown it’s outstanding when the team is clicking, but that hasn’t happened for a while. The Cardinals have a ground game to go with their passing attack and will just edge the Saints. Cardinals 30, Saints 27.

sam.farmer@latimes.com

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