That may be the end of it for the team, but not for us. We’ve now got an official bad guy of Super Bowl XLIII. Beginning with Media Day on Jan. 27 and continuing for three days of team interviews, Boldin is going to have to tell people what he was thinking.

It will be pretty much a manufactured story. Most of them are. In six years with the Cardinals, Boldin has become a Pro Bowl receiver and a good team player. It was only after fellow wide-out Larry Fitzgerald got a big contract extension last year that Boldin, who used to be perfectly happy with his deal, blew a fuse.

He was already trying to talk himself out of town and into more bucks elsewhere when he found himself on the sidelines watching Fitzgerald get all the glory during the Cards’ drive for the winning touchdown.

Rather than cheer on his team, Boldin chose that moment to get into a heated argument with his offensive coordinator, Todd Haley. Showing an admirable ability to multi-task, Haley managed to supervise the winning drive while telling Boldin what he could do with his complaints.

There were reasons for Boldin to be on the sideline. Haley wanted to go with one wide receiver — and the results back up that decision. And Boldin had missed the previous week’s win over Carolina and was nursing a thigh injury.

Special feature Whacked-out wideouts Tom Curran takes a look at the nuttiest receivers from yesterday and today. NBCSports.com

But even if he were healthy, he’d still have no complaint. The object of the game is to win, and the Cardinals won. That makes all coaching decisions perfect and final. All a player who’s left out of the crucial drive can do is shut up, congratulate his teammates and wait until after the season to go into his idiot act.

But he didn’t do that, and for that we should be grateful. Until Boldin went ballistic, it was looking like another Super Bowl week that could be packaged and sold as an insomnia cure. But now we’ve got our bad guy and our controversy.

If this were Week 2, I might say bench him. But in Week 2, we didn’t need his story line. Now we do.

Welcome, Anquan, to the worst week of your life.

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