San Francisco at Arizona

With all of the big stories in the NFL this year (Favre, Brady back, Jay Cutler, etc), other important news has slipped under the radar. For example, the massive culture change and improvement in level of play in San Francisco since Mike Singletary took over. It began last year with a fiery press conference where he threw his players under the bus, challenged them and basically told them if they didn't leave it all on the field someone else would be. Sometimes teams respond to this and other times the coach loses the team. Singletary gained his team's attention and trust and the Niners finished the season with wins in four of their last five games. This, after a bad start to the season with the same players! The Niners also went through the 2009 preseason winning three of four games. For those counting, that's 7-2 for big Mike. He continues to display his passion to win and his team is playing up to it. The Arizona Cardinals may not get what they had hoped from Kurt Warner this season. Warner had hip surgery in the off-season, looked horrid throwing the ball in the preseason, and the Cards went 0-4. He had three fumbles, three INT's and zero TD passes. It doesn't help that Anquan Boldin and Steve Breaston missed a lot of time with injuries and that could hamper timing in the opener. It also doesn't bode well for the Cards that the Super Bowl loser is 0-9 ATS the last nine years in game one. Niners underated - Cards overrated. I like the Niners here to cover and, perhaps, win this one.