Fitzgerald’s move from the glam outside of the line of scrimmage to the more hardhat role in the slot should remind everyone that blocking remains crucial to American-football happiness, and it should underscore that football is wildly interconnected.

“He’s probably the best blocking receiver in the league,” Arizona head coach Bruce Arians said, then added, “That’s why our running game is so much better.”

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Have a look: Even as an 11-5 team in 2014, Arizona ranked 31st of the 32 teams in the NFL in rushing yards and 32nd in rushing yards per play.

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As a 13-3 team in 2015 heading into a Saturday night playoff bout with visiting Green Bay, Arizona stands eighth and 11th in those categories. The latter boomed from 3.3 per play to 4.2, and the total went from 1,308 to 1,917, ample yards for all the Johnsons of Arizona’s backfield. The veteran Chris (Johnson) gained 814 before his tibia broke on Nov. 29 against San Francisco, and the rookie David (also Johnson) has a considerable 581 in 125 attempts (4.6 per).

“Oh, it’s really cool,” David Johnson said of having Fitzgerald for a teammate, “especially knowing that we’re on the same side of the ball. A lot of teams try to scheme against him and they kind of leave us running backs — they don’t really think about us all that much. It helps out a lot.”

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Fitzgerald has showed, as Hines Ward once showed, that it’s possible to enhance one’s blocking later in life, if one wants to help the team and all that. Said offensive coordinator Harold Goodwin, “It comes with a lot of choice words, what you say to him to get him to block. ‘If you want the ball, bleep bleep bleep bleep, you’ve got to block some.’ But no, he’s embraced it … I just kind of harp on him, about guys like Hines Ward and how they used to block in Pittsburgh and that kind of thing. But, he’s bought in 100 percent.

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“At first, everything’s a little weird to him because he’s played one position his whole career, but once he saw, ‘You play here in the slot a little bit, it’s going to open up this in the passing game, just block a little bit for us.’”

The young do notice, Goodwin said: “The other guys are behind him too because when those guys see him block, they want to block, too.”

Speaking Wednesday as a 12-season sage with 1,018 NFL receptions for 13,366 yards and 98 touchdowns, one of them an electrifying Super Bowl snare in 2009, Fitzgerald said, “I’m sure [offensive tackle] Bobby Massie, if you told him, ‘You could catch a touchdown,’ he’d probably be more excited than blocking one of the defensive ends. Catching balls is always great. Blocking is a little bit more dirty, but it’s part of the game, and if you want to have success, you have to do things like that.”

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“Everybody wants to be that receiver where you get the big, deep balls down the sideline, and make the big catches,” said center Lyle Sendlein, the nine-season veteran who himself might even want to be that receiver. “And you know, it takes a different guy to move inside. Like a Hines Ward, who I think is the best blocking receiver of all time, and he took a lot of pride in coming down into the box and being physical with some linebackers. And that’s something where Larry’s — you know, we’ve asked him to play that role, and not only has he helped us in the run game but I think he’s had one of the most productive years he’s ever had as a receiver.”

That would be accurate and that, too, would be a lesson. Somehow in the interconnectedness of football, moving to the slot and blocking has wound up nourishing the running game and, in turn, helping Fitzgerald to 109 receptions, six more than in any prior season. That kind of number, in turn, both results from and fuels the Most Valuable Player candidacy of quarterback Carson Palmer, who will seek his first playoff victory at a very ripe 36. “We’ve got to go change that,” Fitzgerald said.

A younger receiver, the fourth-year pass-catcher Brittan Golden, notes the continuing, fine details of Fitzgerald’s routes, no matter where he stands along the line to commence them.

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“He’s very patient” in the routes, Golden said. “If you watch him, you’d notice, just the way he comes into his routes. You’ll notice that a first-, second- or third-year guy, he’s going to be more trying to get to his route full-speed, trying to get into place. [Fitzgerald] gets to where he’s got to be, but at the same time, he’s just more fluent, more patient. It’s just a different feel.”

The old patience and the new blocking have reiterated that especially as earnest players age, they do tend to value the collaborative above the statistical. Fitzgerald still cites Arizona’s unexpected Super Bowl run of 2009 as his career highlight. He has lived enough here to feel the major difference this time, with Arizona as a rested No. 2 seed of hefty expectation. “Yeah, I would say this is probably the first time” with a heavy bandwagon, he said.

“Our success is bigger than one man or two men or three men,” he said. “We’ve been able to accomplish something to this point that took 53 guys and a bunch of coaches that have bought in, and were committed to having us win. Coach always talks about, ‘Just do your job; play your role to the best of your ability,’ and I think that’s the reason we’ve gotten to this point, because guys have accepted their roles no matter big, small or indifferent. Everybody understands that ‘Coach’ asks you to do something, you do it and have success, you’re going to keep getting opportunities, and that’s just kind of how the motto is around here.”

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A 32-year-old has embodied that and all its statistical permutations, even as there might be one more secret to blocking at 32.

“That’s the beauty of being out in the desert,” said Sendlein, the Texas graduate who went to Chaparral High School in adjacent Scottsdale. “Things don’t ache as bad as when you’re on the East Coast. A little insider tip. Arizona adds a few years.”