azdad1978
Championship!!!!
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 29, 2004 12:00 AM
Dennis Green is a stubborn man.
He won't say he was wrong. He won't abandon his playoff pipe dream.
Sorry, but the joke is over.
Get past another laborious loss and another day of dog-breath football, and an interesting thing happened Sunday at Sun Devil Stadium. For the first time since they bowed in unison for the new sheriff in town, a large number of Cardinals fans turned on Green, their savior in headsets.
It was an angry response for benching Josh McCown last week in North Carolina. It surfaced in the form of heavy booing whenever a Shaun King pass bounced in the dirt. Tellingly, it started on the first series of the game, evolving into chants of "We want Josh!"
The visceral climate was not exactly what King hoped for when he pleaded for people to be patient and positive.
"Their window to what's going on is what they hear and what they read in the media," King said. "You look at what they heard and read last week and it wasn't positive."
Problem is, King largely misunderstood the gesture. He thought people where unhappy with him, and he blamed the media for furthering "preconceived notions" that he's barely good enough to be holding a clipboard for the Bad News Bears.
What King failed to realize was that all the booing was a show of discontent for the head coach, the one who had the audacity to start King in the first place. It was the first show of rebellion from ticket buyers in the pew, as if this ongoing quarterback fiasco had broken some magic spell the coach had going with the general public.
"I think that any strategy that doesn't work, you're not pleased with," said Green, inching as close as he was going to get to an admission of error.
No doubt, there are countless things Green has done well in his debut season. Winning enough games to sell a playoff mirage is no small feat in Arizona, if he can coax three more wins out of this bunch, someone should name a fajita or a fishing pole in his honor.
Yet for most of the football-starved sheep in the Valley, Green could do no wrong for 11 months, even when he was breaking NFL practice rules, cutting Pete Kendall and demoting Marcel Shipp and L.J. Shelton. But this ill-timed, illogical switch in quarterbacks is like a coffee stain on blue jeans that won't come out the first time through the wash. It will follow the coach through the rest of the season, leaving many to wonder what could've been had he left McCown behind center.
It has created the first credibility crisis for Green, and for the first time, diehards may be wondering if they're following the Pied Piper into the river. The sight of a smiling Kendall walking off the field in victory won't help matters a bit.
"There's one guy on that sideline I don't like," Kendall said. "All the rest of them, I think an awful lot of."
The problem here has become one of consistency. Coaches who run tight ships tolerate no questions from their players. Inevitably, that means they don't like questions from the media, either.
While Green's postgame remarks almost sounded contrite, his steady refusal to explain his quarterback posturing reeked of arrogance, and that was the first serious strain placed on the bond of trust he had enjoyed with the fans.
Then there's his zealous pursuit of the playoffs, which makes perfect sense to a mathematician observing an awful NFC West division. But fans remember the last outrageous promise - McCown is my guy, my emerging star - and they see how quickly Green pulled that plug.
And now, blind faith isn't coming so easily.
So, in some ways, it is a good thing the Cardinals lost on Sunday. Had they prevailed, it would've furthered this ridiculous playoff myth. Instead, it was a mercy killing, the day when fans broke through the haze and understood this team is flawed, the coach is no miracle worker and any talk of the P-word belongs solely with the basketball team in town.
http://www.azcentral.com/sports/columns/articles/1129bickley1129.html
Nov. 29, 2004 12:00 AM
Dennis Green is a stubborn man.
He won't say he was wrong. He won't abandon his playoff pipe dream.
Sorry, but the joke is over.
Get past another laborious loss and another day of dog-breath football, and an interesting thing happened Sunday at Sun Devil Stadium. For the first time since they bowed in unison for the new sheriff in town, a large number of Cardinals fans turned on Green, their savior in headsets.
It was an angry response for benching Josh McCown last week in North Carolina. It surfaced in the form of heavy booing whenever a Shaun King pass bounced in the dirt. Tellingly, it started on the first series of the game, evolving into chants of "We want Josh!"
The visceral climate was not exactly what King hoped for when he pleaded for people to be patient and positive.
"Their window to what's going on is what they hear and what they read in the media," King said. "You look at what they heard and read last week and it wasn't positive."
Problem is, King largely misunderstood the gesture. He thought people where unhappy with him, and he blamed the media for furthering "preconceived notions" that he's barely good enough to be holding a clipboard for the Bad News Bears.
What King failed to realize was that all the booing was a show of discontent for the head coach, the one who had the audacity to start King in the first place. It was the first show of rebellion from ticket buyers in the pew, as if this ongoing quarterback fiasco had broken some magic spell the coach had going with the general public.
"I think that any strategy that doesn't work, you're not pleased with," said Green, inching as close as he was going to get to an admission of error.
No doubt, there are countless things Green has done well in his debut season. Winning enough games to sell a playoff mirage is no small feat in Arizona, if he can coax three more wins out of this bunch, someone should name a fajita or a fishing pole in his honor.
Yet for most of the football-starved sheep in the Valley, Green could do no wrong for 11 months, even when he was breaking NFL practice rules, cutting Pete Kendall and demoting Marcel Shipp and L.J. Shelton. But this ill-timed, illogical switch in quarterbacks is like a coffee stain on blue jeans that won't come out the first time through the wash. It will follow the coach through the rest of the season, leaving many to wonder what could've been had he left McCown behind center.
It has created the first credibility crisis for Green, and for the first time, diehards may be wondering if they're following the Pied Piper into the river. The sight of a smiling Kendall walking off the field in victory won't help matters a bit.
"There's one guy on that sideline I don't like," Kendall said. "All the rest of them, I think an awful lot of."
The problem here has become one of consistency. Coaches who run tight ships tolerate no questions from their players. Inevitably, that means they don't like questions from the media, either.
While Green's postgame remarks almost sounded contrite, his steady refusal to explain his quarterback posturing reeked of arrogance, and that was the first serious strain placed on the bond of trust he had enjoyed with the fans.
Then there's his zealous pursuit of the playoffs, which makes perfect sense to a mathematician observing an awful NFC West division. But fans remember the last outrageous promise - McCown is my guy, my emerging star - and they see how quickly Green pulled that plug.
And now, blind faith isn't coming so easily.
So, in some ways, it is a good thing the Cardinals lost on Sunday. Had they prevailed, it would've furthered this ridiculous playoff myth. Instead, it was a mercy killing, the day when fans broke through the haze and understood this team is flawed, the coach is no miracle worker and any talk of the P-word belongs solely with the basketball team in town.
http://www.azcentral.com/sports/columns/articles/1129bickley1129.html
