The other night the 620 Sportsline discussed ‘What is the Cardinals most pressing issue this off-season?’  A list of things came to mind and we decided to categorize them from definite needs all the way down to a trade.

Cards Priority List:

New contract for Anquan

Pros:  Keep in-tact the best receiver tandem in the NFL.  Keep Larry Fitzgerald and Kurt Warner happy.  Particularly the former, since Fitz has agreed to restructure his deal, and will likely face tougher coverages with Boldin out of the equation.
Cons:  Tying up significant sums of money to two receivers.  May hamper ability to improve on the OL. RB, and/or resign key defensive players like Karlos Dansby, Antonio Smith, and Adrian Wilson.  Sets precedent for players complaining and then getting what they want.  Darnell Dockett and Adrian Wilson may follow suit.

New contract for Warner

Pros:  Continuity at the QB position, arguably the most important in the NFL.  Keep leader and great guy in your locker-room, and arguably the finest community advocate in any sport.
Cons:  Anything more than a one-year deal will almost certainly induce a trade of Matt Leinart, since the latter will undoubtedly want the opportunity to start elsewhere.   Moreover, this could adversely affect Leinart’s trade value this off-season.  Run the risk of tying up long-term money in a player that may have peaked in the short-term.  The success rate of 38 year old quarterbacks is the greatest. EX:
Steve Young – lasted 3 games before career ending concussion.
Brett Favre – led Packers to NFC Championship, All-Pro – still playing
John Elway- led Broncos to Super Bowl- retired after
Warren Moon- started 15 games for Vikings, All-Pro – played 6 more seasons in the NFL, with 2 more All-Pro years
Vinny Testaverde -  started 16 games for Jets, who finished 10-6 – played 6 more seasons in the NFL, started 15 games for Dallas at age 41 (5-10).
Dan Marino – started 11 games, finished with career low 67.4 QB rating – retired after
Rich Gannon – Following MVP season at age 37 in 2002, started 7 games for Raiders (2-5).  Started 3 more the following year – retired after
Phil Simms – started 4 games for Giants (1-3), started all 16 the following year, All-Pro – retired after
Joe Montana – started 14 games for the Chiefs (9-5) - retired after
Dave Krieg – started 12 games for Bears (6-6), played 2 more seasons as a backup in Tennessee – retired after

New contract for Ken Whisenhunt

Pros:  Give the person arguably most responsible for turning this franchise around the proper respect and reward for his amazing efforts.  Ensure that Whisenhunt will not be tempted to test the open waters when his deal expires.   EX:  Jon Gruden’s departure from the Oakland Raiders in 01’.  Oakland Raiders head coaches since:
Bill Callahan, 2002-03 17-18 .486
Norv Turner, 2004-05 9-23 .281
Art Shell, 2006 2-14 .125
Lane Kiffin, 2007-08 5-15 .250
Tom Cable, 2008 4-8 .333
Cons:  Coaches with long-term deals tend to get more power, and coaches with more power tend to be not as successful once they receive a measure of front office control.  EX:  two that got let go this year,  Mike Shanahan and Jon Gruden.  We’ve already seen Whisenhunt dabble in this, and Anquan Boldin wasn’t too happy with the way it went….

New contract for Adrian Wilson

Pros:  Reward for longest tenured Cardinal, and one for loyalty.  I.E, taking the step the organization did not take in 1998 in regards to FB Larry Centers.  Keep one of the best defensive playmakers and leaders.
Cons:  Getting older (will be 30 next year). Doesn’t really have a position, making him more susceptible to a drop off in production if a scheme and/or coordinator change is made.

New contract for Darnell Dockett

Pros:  Team leader, productive player- hard to find at the DE position for a 3-4 defense.  Still young – 27- and has been healthy for the most part.  Keeping him under contract will lessen the loss of Antonio Smith if he leaves this off-season.
Cons:  Immature, prone to stupid penalties, and sometime stupid comments to the media.  Still under contract through 2011, which sets a bad precedent of ripping up existing deals right after they’ve been signed (Dockett signed his in 2006).

New contract for Karlos Dansby

Pros:  Keep defensive leader and productive player on the roster.  Still young – 27- and has been healthy for the most part.  Could always use franchise tag on him again, but…
Cons:  Using the franchise tag could upset him, and other players on the roster as it is seen as acting in bad faith on the Cards part.  The franchise tag is supposed to be a precursor to signing a long-term deal, and not just a tool to keep existing players under contract under a series of one-year deals.  Linebacker is probably the easiest position to fill with impact players in the draft, and the Pittsburgh Steelers have shown the ability to restock the position over many years without getting stuck with long-term deals.

New contract for Antonio Smith

Pros:  Same as Dockett, except he’s a tad younger (6 months, also 27), and less volatile.  Productive and healthy.
Cons:  The Cards have 2nd round pick Calais Campbell waiting in the wings, and Dockett under contract until 2011.

Keep Todd Haley

Pros:  Best chance to keep offensive rolling in 2009.  Best play caller the organization has ever had.
Cons:  Not much more you can give him.  Haley got raise and extension last off-season (thru 2010) after he turned down the Miami Dolphins head coaching position.   Not much room for promotion, Russ Grimm is already the Cards assistant head coach, and it’s unlikely Haley will take that position away.

Keep Russ Grimm 

Pros:  Works wonders with an offensive line that some still wonder how they got this team to a Super Bowl.  Close confidant of Whisenhunt, so he keeps the head coach happy.
Cons:  Same as Haley.   Grimm’s already an assistant head coach, already a highly paid assistant coach, and can’t get more power than he has right now.  Unless he’s a head coach….

Retaining Edge

Pros:  Continuity with the offensive success this team has had the post-season, arguably the best, most-balanced attack that they’ve had.  Has been durable the past few seasons, a rarity for the RB position.
Cons:  Was unhappy this year, no reason to believe he won’t be next year.  Doesn’t have the breakaway burst he used to have and is old by running back standards (30).  Cards can save $5 mill by letting him go.

Trading Leinart

Pros:  Probably doesn’t fit Whisenhunt’s system, and right now might be the best chance to capitalize on his already compromised trade value.  Probably would prefer a change of scenery.
Cons:  Reasonably priced next year ($1.1 mill) and in 2010 ($2.4 mill).  The odds of a 38-year old Kurt Warner staying healthy for two more years are slim, and a quality backup will likely be needed for that reason.  What is the alternative for backup quarterback- a draft pick? Brian St.-Pierre?

The 620 Sportsline producer Rod Lakin gave a guest column on Warner’s career and what this Sunday could mean to it.

If I told you, this September, that a future Hall of Famer would be quarterbacking his 2nd franchise to the Super Bowl, you would have told me that man’s name was Brett Favre. Well, you would have been wrong, mercifully so, as we’ve all been spared that ugly, alternate future - one that could hardly contain enough Chris Berman superlatives, or Broadway Joe analogies. Instead, this January’s analogy of choice is Craig Morton, the only other quarterback besides Kurt Warner to lead two football franchises to a Super Bowl.

The former is no small feat: Aged 37 years (same as Warner) former 49er great Joe Montana fell short by a game, and 8 points in his bid to get the Kansas City Chiefs to Super Bowl XXVII in 1994. Steve McNair (of Titan and Ravens fame) missed it by two games in 2006, and even the legendary, aforementioned Favre couldn’t come close to pulling it off when his Jets missed the playoffs this year.

The Favre comparison is a good one, partly because both will be identified as two of the greater quarterbacks of their time, and mainly because of the opposite paths both took to garner such acclaim. To claim Favre is anything other than great would be both foolish and irrational. To claim he has become anything but a self-consumed narcissist might be a little more argumentative, if not (to me, at least) plausible.

A second round pick in 1991, NFL starter at 23, and a Super Bowl champion at 28, Favre’s the Cal Ripken of his day, lionized for his “everyman” demeanor and work ethic, worshipped by the media, but hardly by his teammates. (Yes, even the great Ripken seemed “distant“ to some, given his separate travel arrangements, and hotel accommodations.) Needless to say, a Thomas Jones-style exposé will never be levied at the expense of Warner. Perhaps the best way to display this reciprocal affection, would be when Warner and the Cards played against Favre’s Jets on September 28th. That day Warner threw the pass that nearly ended Anquan Boldin’s career, and in the tense moments that followed this wicked helmet-to-helmet collision, Warner said he considered ending his own. This was a serious claim, much more so than the countless retirement flirtations of Favre. Favre’s most recent came last off-season, when he bid a tearful farewell to Green Bay, only to parade his services to other NFL franchises before training camp, commandeering the newspaper headlines and controlling the airwaves when his self-obsessed rant about the Packers organization and entitlement issues spilled out over Fox News. It was a shameful display, the manifest of many years of NFL worship, and the last several of “don’t go Brett” sentiment. Meanwhile in Flagstaff, another sentiment was growing.

Kurt Warner started 2008 in a familiar role. Despite a solid 2007 season, during which he threw 27 TD passes, when Matt Leinart returned from injury, Warner returned to the bench. Unlike Favre, who couldn’t even bring himself to compete with his young protégé Aaron Rodgers, Warner quietly outperformed Leinart throughout training camp and into the pre-season. It was his job by the start of the regular season, and Warner never looked back. This was nothing new.

Beloved by his teammates, and not by NFL scouts, the undrafted Warner broke into the league the same year Favre was dominating it. Like Favre, Warner was able to lead a team to Super Bowl glory at age 28, but unlike Favre, sustained success and starting quarterback status did not follow. If Favre is football’s Cal Ripken, Warner might be Jack Morris.  The winningest starting pitcher in the 1980s with the Detroit Tigers, Morris toiled in obscurity for a four-year period before re-launching a career at the ripe age of 36 with the Minnesota Twins. Morris won a championship that year, and Sunday Warner may be poised to do the same. In the week directly preceding, the media will likely feature the same Warner story that has been featured many times over. Perhaps it’s worth retelling, or perhaps we’ve heard it too many times. In any case, as “same old stories” go, I’ll gladly take this tired one over the loathsome farewell campaign that simply won’t retire.

The Same Old Cardinals loudly passed away on the afternoon of January 18, 2009.  Cause of death was from a clutch 14-play, 72-yard drive in front of more than 70 thousand fans and hundreds of thousands watching on television.

Born in 1988, the Same Old Cardinals lived a long, pointless life.  They averaged only 5.7 wins per season from 1988 thru 2007.  They finished .500 or better in 1994, 1998, and 2007. Often times playing in front of a half empty stadium, or, sometimes a stadium filled with Dallas Cowboy fans, the Same Old Cardinals could often be seen making vacation plans by October.

The high point of the Same Old Cardinals surely came in 1995, when on October 1st, Chiefs quarterback Steve Bono ran 76-yards, untouched for a touchdown on a naked boot leg.  Things only got better later that year, when on Christmas night, Coach Buddy Ryan walked off the field before the game against the Cowboys had ended.  The winner had left town.

In a lifetime filled with late signing first-round draft picks, blustery bravado-filled coaches and a near annual top ten draft pick, the Same Old Cardinals nearly suffered a fatal blow in 1998 when they made the playoffs and beat the Dallas Cowboys in Dallas in the first round before falling to the Vikings.

But the Same Old Cardinals made a remarkable comeback in the spring of 1999 when they failed to keep Lomas Brown, Jamir Miller or Larry Centers.

The demise of the Same Old Cardinals began on April 12th, 2003 when workers began construction of the University of Phoenix Stadium.  Another blow was dealt on September 10th, 2006 when the stadium opened to universal praise.  But the Same Old Cardinals received a dose of good medicine when they hosted the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football.

The health of the Same Old Cardinals went on life support on January 14th, 2007 with the hiring of Ken Whisenhunt.

Hanging on for dear life, the final blow came when Tim Hightower caught a touchdown pass from Kurt Warner.

The Same Old Cardinals are survived by Bill Bidwill, Michael Bidwill, Larry Wilson and Ron Wolfley.

Funeral services will be held on February first.

 

 Obituary [3:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (35)

The 620 Sportsline producer Rod Lakin gave a guest column on where the Cardinals are right now.

The Cardinals take a page from Pittsburgh, but can they turn the page on a losing legacy?

Ironic, that at a time of so much change in our country, the eyes of the world will descend on such an improbable Super Bowl match-up. The fitting phrase, for those who continue to miss the distinction, is who could have - not who would have thought the Arizona Cardinals would be competing on the world’s biggest stage. Suffice to say, I could not have comprehended such a notion as soon as three years ago, after watching this bumbling franchise for as long as I have. But things have changed. When exactly those changes took place will be sorted out in the books surely to follow next Sunday’s historical game. The easy answer, and perhaps the laziest one, would be in November of 2000, when the franchise was handed a check to build a new stadium. Nearly six years later, University of Phoenix Stadium was a reality, but a winning football team surely wasn’t.

For me, the initial inkling of a contending Cardinals team wasn’t evident until late, last September. Up until that point, Ken Whisenhunt’s “Steeler brand” of football had been little more than a hopeful promise - one of many that I heard from many Cardinal head coaches over the years. As mission statements go, however, Whisenhunt’s was a bit more appealing. “A physical, tough brand of football,“ seemed a little more grounded in reality then the grandiose podium statements featuring self-professed “winners,” and “sheriffs.” Still, it wasn’t until the Cardinals actually out “Pittsburgh-ed” the Pittsburgh Steelers that I began to believe Whisenhunt was anything more than just another Buddy Ryan or Dennis Green.

For those who have already forgotten, the event I’m referring to was a 21-14 Cardinal win over Mike Tomlin’s Pittsburgh Steelers last September 30th. It was the last time those teams have met, and the first meeting between Whisenhunt and the organization that passed him over. In the time that has passed since, Tomlin’s Steelers have become a consistent Super Bowl contender, a title that has eluded Whisenhunt’s new team until now.

Now, the Cardinals are displaying all the traits that carried them to victory that Sunday: A strong opportunistic defense, with a balanced offense. Arizona will need both again next Sunday against Tomlin’s Steelers, and all indications are that they will. Will a victory be enough to cleanse the Cardinals losing legacy remains the better question, one that can only be answered a few years from now. Who could have envisioned such a premise just a few years ago?

It was not the reaction I was expecting as the players danced and the confetti flew.

It made me want to cry.

But as I stood there, in soak-it-in-mode, watching the Cardinals celebrate the mother of all unexpected moments, that was the sensation.

I could feel tears in my eye sockets.  It was weird, bizarre, surreal.  But then consider the moment; the Cardinals just earned a spot in the Super Bowl.  How much more weird, bizarre and surreal can you get?

Come to find out I wasn’t the only one.  As part of our marathon coverage on Sports 620 KTAR last night, Mark Asher called in to say he felt the same thing and that dozens of guys in his section were openly bawling.

An Arizona native, born and raised, I flushed all my old allegiances (the Seahawks….don’t ask) the day the Cardinals moved here.  And since that day it has been nothing…..but pain, and suffering, and humiliation, and torment.

From 1988 through 2007 the Arizona Cardinals averaged 5.7 wins per season.  Frankly I’m surprised the number was that high.

Last night a caller tried to compare this moment to the 2001 D-backs/Yankees World Series.  Nice try, but no.  The D-backs were in the playoffs by their second year and won a world championship in the fourth.  That’s not suffering, that’s a championship in a drive-thru.  (I’ll have the number four, please super-size the trophy, thanks).  It was magical but it also set the bar at a level where D-back fans quickly became spoiled, thinking it was going to be like that all the time.

This is different.  Spoiled is a word that will never, ever be used to describe a Cardinal fan.

After the near-tear experience, the rest of the day played out like an episode of “Lost”.

There was Bill Bidwill holding the NFC trophy.  I flashed back to the day he strode into the Cardinals media workroom and calmly announced that Buddy Ryan had been fired and the search for a new coach would begin immediately.  A franchise adrift.

There was Ken Whisenhunt.  I flashed back to the day he was hired and the hope I felt that maybe-just-maybe the Cardinals finally got it right by hiring a legit, hungry coach (and I could hear Red from The Shawshank Redemption in my head, warning me that “hope is a dangerous thing”).  There can’t be enough written or said about what coach Whisenhunt has meant to this organization.

I saw Adrian Wilson cry like a school girl during his postgame interview.  I flashed back to the day he signed his contract extension, truly believing the Cardinals were on their way to legitimacy.  His forced fumble of Donovan McNabb should’ve ended the game yesterday but the Cards couldn’t turn the miscue into points.

When Larry Fitzgerald walked into the interview room, I went back to the days after Whisenhunt’s hire and questions persisted about Fitzgerald’s ability to play for somebody other than the coach who drafted him, Dennis Green.  I think I actually chuckled out loud.  He was unstoppable…again.

Kurt Warner walked in the room, clutching his Bible, thanking Jesus, crying when talking about his wife Brenda.  I flashed back to the week I spent at training camp this past summer.  Watching him on the practice field, I just knew he was the guy and I wondered if Whisenhunt would have the guts to start the 37-year-old over Matt Leinart.

Then I flashed forward, and saw Warner at the podium in Canton Ohio, wearing a yellow blazer, clutching his Bible, thanking Jesus and crying when talking about his wife Brenda.  Can you tell the story of the NFL without including Kurt Warner?  The man belongs.  Especially after leading that clutch drive in the fourth quarter.

I walked on the field after the crowds had left, kicking the confetti with my feet.  I actually thought about saving some as a memento.  I flashed back to those days at Sun Devil Stadium, when the seats were empty for real (someone once compared the upper deck of Sun Devil Stadium to the banks of a NASCAR race track, empty and grey).  I thought of the Bidwill’s, who had said all along, give us an NFL stadium and we’ll give you and NFL team.  They kept their promise.

Finally, after hosting a four hour postgame show, I thought about the fans and a day that I’m sure many thought would never come.

And I flashed forward to a funeral service.  On the tombstone it read “Same Old Cardinals, 1988-2007, Rest in Peace”