Sports Then and Now

Every team in the NFL has its own collection of heroes. Players who played key roles in helping that franchise reach their greatest heights. Some of these players have been enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and are forever immortalized. However, many players who endeared themselves to the home fans, but were not quite Hall of Fame worthy, have been forgotten as time passes and new players take their place.

Over the next few months, we will be going team-by-team and featuring some of the “Forgotten Stars” whose greatness was valuable to their team, but who have been largely forgotten over time. We are not simply highlighting the best players from a franchise who are not in the Hall of Fame, but instead featuring some of the players who were important contributors and helped define the team during their era.

Some of these players probably should be in the Hall of Fame and were well known stars, while others were simply solid players and are remembered primarily only by true fans.

With only a few exceptions, we will be focusing primarily on players whose careers ended prior to 2000 to shine the spotlight on players from past generations.

We start with the Arizona Cardinals, a franchise that has been around since the beginning of the NFL, but has bounced between three different locations.

Chicago/St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals

One of the original NFL teams, the Cardinals have enjoyed only intermittent success over the last 90+ years. They are also a franchise that has struggled to maintain a strong fan base as they originally played in Chicago before spending 28 years in St. Louis and now more than two decades in Arizona.

During that time, the Cardinals have won only two championships, the last in 1947 and appeared in one Super Bowl. However, there have been many great players who have worn the cardinal red, including 16 Hall of Fame players, 10 of which played a significant portion of their career with the Cardinals.

In addition to those Hall of Famers, many other great players have become fan favorites in Chicago, St. Louis or Arizona. Below are features on six players who all were valuable players during their time with the Cardinals. Read the rest of this entry →

Matt Leinart was never able to emerge as the clear starter in Arizona.

NFL history is full of quarterbacks who were high draft picks or Heisman Trophy winners but were unable to make it in professional football. However, I remain surprised that it appears likely that the Matt Leinart’s name will soon be added to that list.

Many of the highly regarded college quarterbacks in recent history who didn’t cut it as NFL starters really can’t be seen as surprises. Some, like Andre Ware, David Klingler, Joey Harrington and Ty Detmer were products of the system they ran while in college. Others, such as Akili Smith, JaMarcus Russell, Dan McGwire and Ryan Leaf had only limited college experience and were drafted more based on potential than on-the-field success.

Matt Leinart was not only the quarterback of two national championship squads and the winner of a Heisman Trophy, but he had the talent that would have likely made him the first pick in the NFL Draft had he left following his junior season in 2004.

Instead he returned to lead the USC Trojans to within a whisker of a third national title and then was selected with the 10th pick in the 2006 NFL Draft. At the time, his drop to the tenth spot was attributed to the strength of that draft, but in reality it may have been the first sign of things to come.

Then Arizona coach Dennis Green was thrilled to have Leinart fall to the Cardinals and put him in the starting lineup for 11 games during his rookie season as a replacement for former league MVP Kurt Warner. As it turns out, that was the highlight of Leinart’s four years with the Cardinals. Read the rest of this entry →

Kurt Warner is announcing his retirement after 12 years in the NFL.

As word spread in recent days of the inevitable announcement by Kurt Warner of his retirement, I have been surprised by some questions of whether Warner deserves in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Now that he has officially announced the end of his playing career, I have just one thing to say to those who question his place among the all-time greats: “Are You Crazy?”

I’m not looking to declare Warner among the 10 greatest quarterbacks of all-time (though a case could possibly be made for the lower half of that list), but there is no question that in five years time he will be taking his place among the immortals of NFL history.

In some ways, you could call Warner the modern day Johnny Unitas.

You may recall that after being rejected by his hometown Pittsburgh Steelers, Unitas spent time honing his skills on sandlot fields full of glass and rocks. He then made his way to Baltimore where an injury to starting quarterback George Shaw thrust the 23-year-old into the starting lineup during the 1956 season.

In his second season, Unitas led the Colts to their first winning record in the five year history of the franchise. The next season, Unitas led the Colts to a 9-3 record and their first NFL Championship in what has often been called the Greatest NFL Game Ever Played. Read the rest of this entry →

The Arizona Cardinals pulled out a victory for the ages with a 51-45 win over the Green Bay Packers

During the last week, Sports Then and Now ran a series featuring the 50 greatest games and moments in the history the NFL conference playoffs. The game Sunday evening between the Arizona Cardinals and Green Bay Packers will certainly move near the top of that list.

Ironically, in a game that featured NFL Playoff records for points, total yards and first downs, it was a defensive play that proved to be the difference.

The Packers rebounded from a 31-10 second half deficit to send the game into overtime tied at 45-45.

Considering that Green Bay had scored five touchdowns in the second half it seemed logical that when they won the coin toss for overtime it would lead to a quick score.

However, the score proved to be for the Cardinals. On third down, Aaron Rodgers was sacked and stripped by Michael Adams with the ball bouncing right to Karlos Dansby, who returned the ball 17 yards for the game-winner.

The 51-45 final score set a new record for point in a postseason game. The previous record was 95 set by the Eagles and Lions in 1995.

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There will always be a place for underdogs, like the New York Jets in Super Bowl III, in sports.

There’s more to life than sports, for sure, but there’s more to sports than sports…

There’s a lot of life in sports. As a theologian, psychologist, author and more recently also a financial strategist, I have identified the psycho-spiritual-political dimensions of rooting for the underdog, being the underdog, and the ways in which spirituality, psychology, and even irrational belief can trump size, talent, and win/loss records, and how these dynamics and principles can be useful in the quest for success and victory at various levels and in various arenas, not the least of which, economic.

Any sports fan knows there’s a reason the “worst” team vs. the “best” team  still have to play the game. There is a reason why upsets occur, more often than we might think, and why sports pundits and odds makers who ignore the intangible factors in a match-up, do so at their peril.

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