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Vikings Tice still haunted by loss to Cards!
Land of a thousand mistakes
Wierd seeing a article about the vikes turn into an article about the Cards!
Land of a thousand mistakes
Vikings coach Tice haunted by late-season collapse
Posted: Wednesday March 31, 2004 5:22PM; Updated: Wednesday March 31, 2004 5:24PM
Vikings coach Mike Tice blames a series of events for their 18-17 loss to the Cardinals in the final week of last season.
John Biever/SI
PALM BEACH, Fla. - Notes, quotes and gleanings from the NFC coaches media breakfast Wednesday morning at the NFL's annual meeting, which wrapped up after three days at The Breakers. ...
• Three full months have passed, but naturally Mike Tice still sees the play unfold in his mind's eye several times a day. You know the one. Arizona faces a fourth-and-25 from the Vikings 28, four seconds left on the clock, with visiting Minnesota one snap away from clinching the NFC North title and Tice's first playoff berth as a head coach. Then Josh McCown to Nathan Poole happened and the haunting began.
"I think about it a lot," Tice said Wednesday morning, at the NFC coaches media breakfast. "I thought about it when the plane was landing and going to Orlando the other night. And I thought about it when I was laying in bed -- a lot.
"But it's really not the play, as much as about the last five minutes of the game; what went wrong, the players celebrating when it was 17-6 and me yelling at the players. And one of the players grabbing me and telling me to 'Settle down, we've got it under control.' All the stuff that went on."
Tice has to be agonized by his club's late-season collapse in that all-or-nothing situation against the Cardinals, because so much of what transpired was largely beyond his control.
"I try to think about what I could have done to help the situation," he said. "But I can't make the plays for the players, that's the problem. The players still are the ones that have to make the plays and that's really what it came down to in that situation.
"You've got to get the on-side kick. You've got to bat the ball down. You've got to throw the ball and complete it on third down and keep the clock moving. You've got to stay on-side and not jump off. You can't hold the tight end and get defensive holding and stop the clock. You've got to do all those things."
If any one of those plays that Tice just ticked off had gone differently, the Vikings would have been a 10-6 playoff team. Instead, they were a disappointing 9-7 out-of-the-money finisher after a glowing 6-0 start.
"Yep, that's right," Tice said. "That's why I memorized them all."
• Tice isn't the only one in Minnesota who can't let go of the debacle in the desert. On Monday, as part of commissioner Paul Tagliabue's state-of-the-league presentation to the owners, a video clip of 2003 season highlights was shown. Vikings owner Red McCombs walked in late, just as the play that ended his team's season so bitterly had its moment of glory on screen.
According to a couple folks who were present, McCombs started hooting and hollering in the direction of the commissioner that Poole should have been ruled out of bounds in the back right corner of the end zone -- a contention he has made repeatedly since viewing the instant replay of Poole's touchdown. Nearby Vikings officials merely lowered their head and tried in vain to pretend they don't actually work for McCombs.
• Unless it's the most brazen draft strategy smokescreen in recent NFL history, you can definitively rule out the chance that Arizona is considering a quarterback with its No. 3 pick in the draft. Once and for all, new Cardinals head coach Dennis Green bent over backwards Wednesday to anoint third-year man McCown as his unquestioned quarterback of the present and future.
"I'm not interested in waiting around for a franchise [quarterback]," Green said. "I want a guy that's like everybody else on the team, where the players can look at it and say, 'Here comes Josh. He was a backup last year. Here comes Josh. He wants to be good, but he needs our help to be good. Here comes Josh. He wants to lead this team.'
"He's not going to lead on pedigree. He's not going to lead on amount of money or how many Rolexes he can buy. For us right now, that's where I think we should be. I think we should all get behind Josh McCown and treat him just like everybody else, kind of a young warrior on the come, and start winning right away."
Green said he did a study that shows there are more undrafted quarterbacks starting in the NFL than there are quarterbacks who were selected first overall in the draft. And there are more starting quarterbacks, he said, who were taken in the third round or later than those selected in the draft's top two rounds. McCown was a third-round pick in 2002, and the first three starts of his career came in the final three games of 2003.
"If you let yourself become convinced at No. 3 that you can get yourself another Peyton Manning or get yourself another Steve McNair, then the question is 'How long is it going to take before you start winning [with him] and what do we do until then?'" Green said.
"People sit around and they wait and say, 'Okay, now here comes the savior, and when he's ready to go we're going to win some games.' Now, is he ready the first year? The franchise [quarterbacks] I know weren't. They didn't win, and didn't go to the playoffs. What about the second year? I don't know, I'm not a historian. But I think I understand the concept of when everybody's sitting around waiting for this quote, 'franchise player.'"
From that we can assume that if Eli Manning falls to the Cardinals at No. 3, they're open to a trade.
• Arizona is just one of seven NFL teams - excluding expansion Houston - that hasn't made the playoffs at any point in this century. Detroit, Washington, Jacksonville, San Diego, Buffalo and Cincinnati are the other clubs still trying to crack the postseason since the start of the 2000 season.
But more than a few league observers believe that Green might have the Cardinals in playoff contention sooner than anyone expects. In Minnesota, Green's Vikings teams qualified for the postseason eight times in his 10 seasons.
"I've said right from the start we want to go the playoffs the first year," Green said. "That's our goal. We'll be very disappointed if we don't. ... I like turnaround programs. That's my thing. It always has been. To take programs that people aren't real convinced about and show them what they can be. I enjoy doing that."
Maybe not since he coached at Northwestern in the 1980s has Green faced a bigger turnaround challenge. The Cardinals have a new stadium opening in 2006, but until they move into it and also start showing some signs of improvement on the field, it will likely remain tough for Arizona to attract high-quality free agents. Just as it once was for Tampa Bay, during the Bucs' NFL-record streak of 12 consecutive double-digit-loss seasons (1983-94).
"That's down the road," Green said of turning Arizona into a potential glamour location for free agents. "Right now I think we've got to win with what we've got. Think of it as a boat that had a hole in it. Nobody's going to get in a boat with a hole in it until you can convince them that you've got the thing patched.
"So it's our job to patch the hole in the boat. I think we're going to have to dig our way out of this with what we've got. For the most part, it's going to be the players you've seen play for us in the past. That's going to be who we go with."
Land of a thousand mistakes
Wierd seeing a article about the vikes turn into an article about the Cards!
Land of a thousand mistakes
Vikings coach Tice haunted by late-season collapse
Posted: Wednesday March 31, 2004 5:22PM; Updated: Wednesday March 31, 2004 5:24PM
Vikings coach Mike Tice blames a series of events for their 18-17 loss to the Cardinals in the final week of last season.
John Biever/SI
PALM BEACH, Fla. - Notes, quotes and gleanings from the NFC coaches media breakfast Wednesday morning at the NFL's annual meeting, which wrapped up after three days at The Breakers. ...
• Three full months have passed, but naturally Mike Tice still sees the play unfold in his mind's eye several times a day. You know the one. Arizona faces a fourth-and-25 from the Vikings 28, four seconds left on the clock, with visiting Minnesota one snap away from clinching the NFC North title and Tice's first playoff berth as a head coach. Then Josh McCown to Nathan Poole happened and the haunting began.
"I think about it a lot," Tice said Wednesday morning, at the NFC coaches media breakfast. "I thought about it when the plane was landing and going to Orlando the other night. And I thought about it when I was laying in bed -- a lot.
"But it's really not the play, as much as about the last five minutes of the game; what went wrong, the players celebrating when it was 17-6 and me yelling at the players. And one of the players grabbing me and telling me to 'Settle down, we've got it under control.' All the stuff that went on."
Tice has to be agonized by his club's late-season collapse in that all-or-nothing situation against the Cardinals, because so much of what transpired was largely beyond his control.
"I try to think about what I could have done to help the situation," he said. "But I can't make the plays for the players, that's the problem. The players still are the ones that have to make the plays and that's really what it came down to in that situation.
"You've got to get the on-side kick. You've got to bat the ball down. You've got to throw the ball and complete it on third down and keep the clock moving. You've got to stay on-side and not jump off. You can't hold the tight end and get defensive holding and stop the clock. You've got to do all those things."
If any one of those plays that Tice just ticked off had gone differently, the Vikings would have been a 10-6 playoff team. Instead, they were a disappointing 9-7 out-of-the-money finisher after a glowing 6-0 start.
"Yep, that's right," Tice said. "That's why I memorized them all."
• Tice isn't the only one in Minnesota who can't let go of the debacle in the desert. On Monday, as part of commissioner Paul Tagliabue's state-of-the-league presentation to the owners, a video clip of 2003 season highlights was shown. Vikings owner Red McCombs walked in late, just as the play that ended his team's season so bitterly had its moment of glory on screen.
According to a couple folks who were present, McCombs started hooting and hollering in the direction of the commissioner that Poole should have been ruled out of bounds in the back right corner of the end zone -- a contention he has made repeatedly since viewing the instant replay of Poole's touchdown. Nearby Vikings officials merely lowered their head and tried in vain to pretend they don't actually work for McCombs.
• Unless it's the most brazen draft strategy smokescreen in recent NFL history, you can definitively rule out the chance that Arizona is considering a quarterback with its No. 3 pick in the draft. Once and for all, new Cardinals head coach Dennis Green bent over backwards Wednesday to anoint third-year man McCown as his unquestioned quarterback of the present and future.
"I'm not interested in waiting around for a franchise [quarterback]," Green said. "I want a guy that's like everybody else on the team, where the players can look at it and say, 'Here comes Josh. He was a backup last year. Here comes Josh. He wants to be good, but he needs our help to be good. Here comes Josh. He wants to lead this team.'
"He's not going to lead on pedigree. He's not going to lead on amount of money or how many Rolexes he can buy. For us right now, that's where I think we should be. I think we should all get behind Josh McCown and treat him just like everybody else, kind of a young warrior on the come, and start winning right away."
Green said he did a study that shows there are more undrafted quarterbacks starting in the NFL than there are quarterbacks who were selected first overall in the draft. And there are more starting quarterbacks, he said, who were taken in the third round or later than those selected in the draft's top two rounds. McCown was a third-round pick in 2002, and the first three starts of his career came in the final three games of 2003.
"If you let yourself become convinced at No. 3 that you can get yourself another Peyton Manning or get yourself another Steve McNair, then the question is 'How long is it going to take before you start winning [with him] and what do we do until then?'" Green said.
"People sit around and they wait and say, 'Okay, now here comes the savior, and when he's ready to go we're going to win some games.' Now, is he ready the first year? The franchise [quarterbacks] I know weren't. They didn't win, and didn't go to the playoffs. What about the second year? I don't know, I'm not a historian. But I think I understand the concept of when everybody's sitting around waiting for this quote, 'franchise player.'"
From that we can assume that if Eli Manning falls to the Cardinals at No. 3, they're open to a trade.
• Arizona is just one of seven NFL teams - excluding expansion Houston - that hasn't made the playoffs at any point in this century. Detroit, Washington, Jacksonville, San Diego, Buffalo and Cincinnati are the other clubs still trying to crack the postseason since the start of the 2000 season.
But more than a few league observers believe that Green might have the Cardinals in playoff contention sooner than anyone expects. In Minnesota, Green's Vikings teams qualified for the postseason eight times in his 10 seasons.
"I've said right from the start we want to go the playoffs the first year," Green said. "That's our goal. We'll be very disappointed if we don't. ... I like turnaround programs. That's my thing. It always has been. To take programs that people aren't real convinced about and show them what they can be. I enjoy doing that."
Maybe not since he coached at Northwestern in the 1980s has Green faced a bigger turnaround challenge. The Cardinals have a new stadium opening in 2006, but until they move into it and also start showing some signs of improvement on the field, it will likely remain tough for Arizona to attract high-quality free agents. Just as it once was for Tampa Bay, during the Bucs' NFL-record streak of 12 consecutive double-digit-loss seasons (1983-94).
"That's down the road," Green said of turning Arizona into a potential glamour location for free agents. "Right now I think we've got to win with what we've got. Think of it as a boat that had a hole in it. Nobody's going to get in a boat with a hole in it until you can convince them that you've got the thing patched.
"So it's our job to patch the hole in the boat. I think we're going to have to dig our way out of this with what we've got. For the most part, it's going to be the players you've seen play for us in the past. That's going to be who we go with."
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