Many memorable Mondays for Cards
The Cardinals have been infrequent guests on Monday Night Football, which is to be expected when you have had 12 winning seasons since the show debuted in 1970.
Their game against the Cowboys in Dallas Monday will be just the 14th appearance for the Cardinals in their 33
year history in Arizona.
But that history also shows that when it comes to Monday night, inviting the Cardinals over is like the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving. They tend to create memories with their behavior.
Here is a look at a few of those memorable Monday nights.
Sept. 12, 1988
It was 98 degrees when the Cardinals first regular-season game in Arizona kicked off at 5:09 p.m.
Attendance was 67,139, and many (most?) were there to see the Cowboys, the most popular team in Arizona at the time.
The Cardinals were the better team. It was Tom Landry’s last year as the Cowboys coach. Jimmy Johnson and Troy Aikman would become Cowboys a year later.
Cardinals quarterback Neil Lomax was healthy then and had threats all around him: receiver Roy Green, tight ends Rob Awalt and Jay Novacek, and running back Stump Mitchell.
The Cardinals lost, 17-14, largely because of a bad decision by coach Gene Stallings.
The Cowboys led, 10-7, late in the first half, but the Cardinals were in position for a 42-yard field goal on the final play.
But instead of letting Al Del Greco kick it, Stallings decided to fake it, even though the Cardinals were 24 yards from the end zone. Worse, the fake was a lateral to Del Greco, who gained 8 yards before being tackled.
After the loss, Stallings admitted he should have let Del Greco kick the ball instead of run with it.
“It doesn’t take a Phi Beta Kappa to figure that out,” he said.
Dec. 25, 1995
Six seasons passed before the Cardinals were scheduled again on Monday night.
They were invited this season because of Coach Buddy Ryan’s notoriety, and ABC executives apparently thought a Cardinals-Cowboys season finale on Christmas might make for entertaining viewing.
It didn’t.
The Cardinals were terrible that season and that night.
Two players, linebacker Eric Hill and defensive lineman Chadrick Brown, got into a fight in the locker room before the game, a tussle that was witnessed by former Cardinals great Dan Dierdorf, part of the broadcast crew.
About the only good thing that happened that night for the Cardinals was fullback Larry Centers hurdling cornerback Larry Brown. Scenes from the movie “Jerry Maguire” were shot at Sun Devil Stadium that night, and Centers’ leap is in the film.
Ryan had a unique angle for the game’s final play — the tunnel leading to
the locker room. He mistakenly thought the game was over and left the field early. Maybe because, for some reason, the Cardinals had called timeout before the last play.
The Cardinals finished 4-12.
Ryan, who infamously said “you’ve have a winner in town,” when he took the job two years prior, was fired by owner Bill Bidwill the next day.
He was the only person surprised. “You know me,” he said. “I always figure I’m going to win.”
Sept. 27, 1999
The Cardinals made the playoffs in 1998, which made them attractive enough for Monday Night Football in 1999.
The game turned out to be memorable, but not for the Cardinals, who lost to the 49ers, 24-10.
It was the last game for 49ers quarterback Steve Young.
Young suffered a concussion in the first half when cornerback Aeneas Williams blitzed and hit Young. On his way to the ground, the back of Young’s head
hit the knee of a teammate.
At the time, the injury didn’t seem serious and Young begged coach Steve Mariucci to let him play in the second half.
Young talked with reporters after the game and said the concussion wasn’t as severe as one he suffered two seasons before. But he wasn’t dismissing it, either.
”I am much more sober about it than ever before,” he said, ”and I’ll deal with it as realistically as I possibly can. In the past, I was not as conscious of my future. And now I’m very, very conscious about my future.”
Young suffered from concussion symptoms the remainder of the year and announced his retirement the following summer.
Oct. 16, 2006
Even casual football fans are familiar with Dennis Green’s “the Bears were who we thought they were” rant after the Cardinals blew a 20-point lead and lost 24-23.
What they might not now is the rant came out of nowhere. The question that set Green off was an innocent one about the Bears committing six turnovers.
“What did you see about the Bears to shut them down that way?” asked freelancer Mark Brown.
Green’s “the Bears were who we thought they were” was a reference to the Cardinals victory over the Bears in week three of the preseason, a game in which many starters played three quarters.
Green thought that was significant and an indication that the Bears were not the better team.
The day after the game, Green fired offensive coordinator Keith Rowen, who became the seventh assistant Green had fired, demoted or forced out in three seasons.
The day after
Green was fired.
Nov. 29, 2010
the
a
season
public
ended,
Kurt Warner retired after the 2009 season, and the Cardinals spent the next several years searching for a successor.
In 2010, Matt Leinart was the heir apparent until coach Ken Whisenhunt decided to go with Derek Anderson instead.
The Cardinals scored only 19 offensive touchdowns that year, including just 10 through the air. Those problems were evident this Monday night in a 27-6 loss to the 49ers.
To make matters worse, television cameras caught Anderson and guard Deuce Lutui laughing on the bench with the Cardinals behind by 18 points in the second half.
Jon Gruden, the Monday Night Football color analyst, commented on it coming out of a break, and Cardinals fans vented via Twitter, which had become a thing by then.
That led to the second most famous post-game meltdown in Arizona Cardinal history.
After the game, Anderson at first denied laughing. When I asked him about again, he lost his cool.
“You think I was laughing about something?” Anderson said. “I take this (expletive) serious. Real serious. I put my heart and soul into this (expletive) every single week!”
Anderson issued that week.
Anderson signed with Carolina in 2011 and spent seven seasons there as a backup. In 2016, I caught up with him at the Super Bowl, and he explained what really happened that year and that night.
His one season with the Cardinals was a difficult year for him personally, he said. And he felt his performance was hindered by a lack of work with the starters in the spring and summer. As for that Monday night? “Honestly, how the whole thing went down was almost comical,” Anderson said. “There was a guy behind the bench screaming at me, ‘ F you!’ He would yell at me the whole game, every game. And he (Deuce) just said, ‘F that, D.A. We got your back.’ And I kind of just grinned.”
apology