Here's a scary thought: Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald elevating his game.

"I don’t think I had a particularly good offseason in minicamps," Fitzgerald told KTAR radio in Phoenix, according to sportsradiointerviews.com. "I don’t think I was as crisp as I needed to be. There's a lot of fine tuning I was trying to work on this summer. Coach (Ken) Whisenhunt talked to me before I left and just told me how much he needed me to raise my level of play."

That almost seems like a comical conversation, like telling Peyton Manning he needs to become more consistent. But we should expect Whisenhunt to drive home that thinking at every opportunity as the Cardinals try to stay on top in the NFC West despite returning only 40 players from their end-of-season roster. In case you hadn't noticed, a few people are picking the San Francisco 49ers to win the West this season.

"We’re so used to being the underdogs now, it's kind of second nature to us," Fitzgerald told KTAR. "It actually inspires us and motivates us that other people really count us out. But it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day you have to go out there and produce and you have to go out there and get winning results. You want to get the [media] off your back? Win ballgames. It’s a pretty easy solution."