Edwards looking forward to '09, and so should we

It's not 2003 again, but if it was, Carl Edwards would be the 2008 Sprint Cup champion, by 16 points over Jimmie Johnson.

But you can never go backwards, except at a movie theater. So as it is, Johnson won his history-tying third consecutive Cup championship, by 69 points despite being outrun by Edwards in every critical statistical category: 9-7 in wins, 19-15 in top-five finishes and 27-22 in top-10s.

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Edwards even stole a page from Johnson's virtually guaranteed championship-winning manual, at least in the Chase era, by outscoring Johnson in the last six races, albeit by a narrow, 969-966 margin.

So please forgive this ol' guy for what must have been a retro moment when I guaranteed that Carl would win one of the two NASCAR titles for which he was seriously contending.

Why wouldn't anyone think that? All Edwards did in the last four weekends of the season was win six of the eight races he started. He was second in the only Nationwide race he didn't win and fourth in the only Cup start he failed to win.

That's unprecedented. A couple of years ago, when he was still a focused force in the stretch -- unlike what he's been the past couple seasons -- Tony Stewart won a couple of late-season Cup races.

And of course, Johnson's hefty stretch runs are well-documented legends in his own time, as he actually won a phenomenal four-in-a-row on his way to the 2007 Cup title.

But those achievements are in a single series, chasing a single crown -- not that that really makes it any less stressful, or any easier.

But no, what Edwards did after enduring two bad blows in Cup competition, one that was self-inflicted in the Talladega race and the other a galling part malfunction a week later at Lowe's Motor Speedway, deserves a serious standing ovation.

And considering Edwards is still in a stage of his development curve where he's on an upswing, NASCAR fans could really be in for a treat next season; considering Kyle Busch's second-half wounds after dominating the Cup Series through early August, will be healed; and four-time champion Jeff Gordon might be capable of launching a season-long title-contending effort in 2009. (Continued)