Arizona Cardinals Trivia
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48 free Arizona Cardinals trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Arizona Cardinals trivia quiz covers the oldest continuously run pro football franchise in America: the Morgan Athletic Club of 1898, the faded maroon jerseys that became 'Cardinal red', the disputed 1925 title and the real one in 1947, Ernie Nevers' 40-point game, the St. Louis years and the 1988 move to the desert. It then covers the Arizona era — Jake Plummer's 1998 playoff win, Pat Tillman, Dennis Green's rant, Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald's run to Super Bowl XLIII, Bruce Arians and Carson Palmer, Kyler Murray, DeAndre Hopkins, Marvin Harrison Jr., State Farm Stadium's roll-out grass field, the Bears rivalry and the longest championship drought in North American sport. Questions run from easy to hard with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Cardinals franchise dates to 1898 and a Chicago neighbourhood team called what?
Morgan Athletic Club
Morgan Athletic Club began as a neighbourhood pick-up side on Chicago's South Side; it went on to become a charter member of the NFL in 1920 and has outlasted all but one of the league's other founders.
Q 02The Cardinals got their name in 1901 when faded second-hand jerseys from which university were dubbed 'Cardinal red'?
University of Chicago
University of Chicago: owner Chris O'Brien bought the Maroons' used jerseys and talked up their washed-out maroon as 'Cardinal red', so the team is named for a colour, not for the bird.
Q 03Despite the Wisconsin city of the same name, the 'Racine' in the 1920 Racine Cardinals referred to what?
A street in Chicago
A street in Chicago: the club's home field stood on Racine Avenue. When a team from Racine, Wisconsin, joined the league in 1922, the Cardinals took their city's name instead to avoid confusion.
Q 04The Cardinals' first NFL title, in 1925, is still disputed by supporters of which team?
Pottsville Maroons
Pottsville Maroons: they had beaten the Cardinals on the field, but the league suspended them for playing an exhibition on another club's patch and gave Chicago the title; it refused to reopen the case as recently as 2003.
Q 05Which Cardinals fullback scored all 40 of his team's points in one 1929 Thanksgiving Day game?
Ernie Nevers
Ernie Nevers ran in six touchdowns and kicked four extra points himself in the 40-6 win, and through the 2025 season no NFL player had scored more in a single game.
Q 06To which city did the Cardinals move in 1960?
St. Louis
St. Louis already had baseball's Cardinals, so for 28 seasons locals told the two teams apart by calling the newcomers the 'football Cardinals' or simply the 'Big Red'.
Q 07In 28 seasons in their second home city, every Cardinals playoff run ended at which stage?
First round
First round: in those 28 seasons they qualified only in 1974, 1975 and 1982 and went out at once each time, a record of futility that helped persuade the owner to move the team again.
Q 08What was the team called for its first six seasons in Arizona before the 1994 name change?
Phoenix Cardinals
Phoenix Cardinals: thin crowds and an ageing stadium had driven the franchise out of its previous home in 1988, and the new name lasted until 'Arizona' replaced it in March 1994.
Q 09Which team did the Cardinals beat 20–7 in January 1999 for their first playoff win since 1947?
Dallas Cowboys
Dallas Cowboys: they had beaten Arizona twice already that season, but Jake Plummer's side won in Texas to end a 51-year wait, the first playoff game the franchise had ever won away from home.
Q 10Which Cardinals safety turned down $3.6 million in 2002 to enlist in the Army and was killed in Afghanistan in 2004?
Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman enlisted alongside his brother eight months after the September 11 attacks; the Army first said he had died under enemy fire, and admitted only weeks later that his own side had shot him.
Q 11After blowing a 20-point lead on Monday night in 2006, which Cardinals coach raged 'they are who we thought they were'?
Dennis Green
Dennis Green had watched his side force six turnovers and lead 23-3, only to lose 24-23 to a team that never scored an offensive touchdown; 'crown their ass!' became a meme, and he was fired after the season.
Q 12Which head coach took the Cardinals to Super Bowl XLIII in his second season?
Ken Whisenhunt
Ken Whisenhunt had been offensive coordinator of the very team he met in that Super Bowl, champions three years earlier with his play-calling, so the title game pitted him against players he used to coach.
Q 13Which quarterback, once a $5.50-an-hour grocery stocker, led the Cardinals to Super Bowl XLIII?
Q 21Which Cardinals head coach, hired in 2019, drafted Kyler Murray and was fired after a 4–13 season in 2022?
Kliff Kingsbury
Kliff Kingsbury had been fired by Texas Tech with a losing record only weeks before Arizona hired him; as a college coach he had said he would spend the first pick on Murray if he could, and then he did.
Q 22Which All-Pro receiver did the Cardinals acquire from Houston in 2020 in a trade for running back David Johnson?
DeAndre Hopkins
DeAndre Hopkins caught a club-record 115 passes in his first Arizona season, among them the leaping 'Hail Murray' touchdown over three Buffalo defenders that won a game in the final seconds.
Q 23Which Ohio State receiver, son of a Colts Hall of Famer, did Arizona draft fourth overall in 2024?
Kurt Warner
Kurt Warner had been benched for a rookie in 2006 and looked finished; two years later, aged 37, he took a franchise with one playoff win in six decades to within 35 seconds of the title.
Q 14Super Bowl XLIII was decided by which Steelers receiver's toe-tap catch with 35 seconds left?
Santonio Holmes
Santonio Holmes kept both feet in the corner of the end zone and was named the game's MVP; barely two minutes earlier Larry Fitzgerald's 64-yard touchdown had put Arizona ahead for the first time.
Q 15Which Steelers linebacker returned an interception 100 yards to end the first half of Super Bowl XLIII?
James Harrison
James Harrison stepped in front of a pass at his own goal line as the half ran out and rumbled the length of the field, turning a likely Arizona lead into a ten-point deficit in a game lost by four.
Q 16Larry Fitzgerald was drafted third overall in 2004 out of which college?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh: Fitzgerald was the Heisman runner-up there as a sophomore. Minnesota was home, where as a teenager he worked as a Vikings ball boy for the head coach who later drafted him for Arizona.
Q 17Larry Fitzgerald ended his career second in NFL history in both catches and receiving yards, behind which player?
Jerry Rice
Jerry Rice: Fitzgerald piled up 1,432 catches and 17,492 yards, every one of them for the Cardinals, and still finished more than 5,000 yards short of Rice's total.
Q 18Which team's Hail Mary forced overtime against the 2015 Cardinals?
Green Bay Packers
Green Bay Packers: Aaron Rodgers' desperation heave tied it as time expired, but Larry Fitzgerald took a pass 75 yards on the first play of overtime and scored the winner two plays later.
Q 19Which head coach retired after 2017 having led the Cardinals to their best record in Arizona?
Bruce Arians
Bruce Arians left as the winningest coach in Cardinals history, then lasted one year out of the game: he took over Tampa Bay and, with Tom Brady at quarterback, won the Super Bowl that had eluded him in Arizona.
Q 20Kyler Murray, first overall in 2019, had already been a first-round pick in which other sport?
Baseball, by the Oakland Athletics
Baseball, by the Oakland Athletics: they took him ninth overall in 2018 and signed him for a $4.66 million bonus, only to see him win the Heisman Trophy that autumn and choose the NFL instead.
Marvin Harrison Jr.
Marvin Harrison Jr. passed up his father's old college, Syracuse, for Ohio State, and went 15 picks higher in the draft than his dad, whom the Colts took 19th in 1996.
Q 24The Cardinals' Glendale stadium, opened in 2006, is famous for what engineering feature?
A roll-out natural grass field
A roll-out natural grass field: the turf lives in a giant tray that sits outside in the desert sun for most of the year and rolls into the building on steel rails only for game days.
Q 25On the frozen field of the 1947 NFL title game, the Cardinals gained an edge by wearing what?
Sneakers
Sneakers gave their backs footing on the ice in a 28-21 win, the first of five home playoff games the franchise has played without ever losing one, through the 2025 season.
Q 26Which team is the Cardinals' oldest rival, the only other franchise left from the NFL's 1920 founding?
Chicago Bears
Chicago Bears: in 1920 they were still the Decatur Staleys, a starch company's works team; once they moved to Chicago the two clubs shared the city for almost four decades, until the Cardinals gave up and left.
Q 27Which team is the Cardinals' oldest divisional rival, first met in 1937?
Los Angeles Rams
Los Angeles Rams: they were the Cleveland Rams when the two first met, and decades later the franchises took turns in the same Midwestern city, the Rams moving in a few years after the Cardinals had left.
Q 28Which retired Cardinals number was re-issued to J. J. Watt in 2021?
99 (Marshall Goldberg)
99 (Marshall Goldberg): Watt was ready to pick a new number out of respect for the 1947 champion until Goldberg's daughter gave her blessing, and he wore 99 for his last two NFL seasons.
Q 29Which Georgia halfback, a Hall of Famer who lived to 100, starred on the 1947 champion Cardinals?
Charley Trippi
Charley Trippi signed for a then-record $100,000 while a rival league was bidding for him, then scored twice in the 1947 title game, on a 44-yard run and a 75-yard punt return.
Q 30Which Cardinals cornerback, a 1991 pick from Southern, entered the Hall of Fame in 2014?
Aeneas Williams
Aeneas Williams went to college for an accounting degree and did not play football there until he walked on as a junior; a year later he led the nation in interceptions, and he went on to eight Pro Bowls.