Sep 7th 2008 9:54PM by Adam Gretz (author feed)
Filed under: 49ers, AZ Cardinals
When the NFL schedule came out several months ago, the San Francisco-Arizona game in week one should have been a matchup between two former first-round picks at quarterback, with Alex Smith lining up under center for the 49ers, while Matt Leinart barked out the signals for the Cardinals. Instead, what we ended up with was an eight-team-in-six-years journeyman, J.T. O’Sullivan, taking on a 37-year old Kurt Warner. Crazy game, this NFL.

In the end, it was the ageless wonder and the Cardinals pulling out a 23-13 win in San Francisco.

O’Sullivan, making his first NFL start, had a mixed bag of good and bad, as he managed to complete 14-of-20 for 195 yards (that’s good), but was also intercepted once and fumbled twice (that’s bad). As a team, the 49ers were guilty of five turnovers and only managed to run 40 plays on offense while the Cardinals controlled the ball for over 37 minutes of clock-time, none of which was all that pleasing to 49ers head coach Mike Nolan.
The game looked even worse than it was to embattled 49ers coach Mike Nolan, who kept insisting his team had made six turnovers after losing four fumbles and an interception.
“I feel, had we played more of our type of game, we had every right to win the game,” Nolan said. “Obviously, Arizona came out better prepared from the turnover standpoint. Last year, we beat them twice (because) we won the turnover battle twice.”

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