This article details the history of the Arizona Cardinals American football club, which can be traced to the 1898 formation of the amateur Morgan Athletic Club in Chicago. The Cardinals are the oldest extant professional football club in the United States, and along with the Chicago Bears, are one of two charter members of the National Football League still in existence. The franchise moved from Chicago to St. Louis in 1960 and to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1988.
Chicago years (1920–1959)
St. Louis years (1960–1987)
Arizona years (1988–present)
Early years (1988–1993)
On January 15, 1988, Bill Bidwill announced his intention to move to Arizona. On March 15, 1988, the NFL team owners voted to allow Bidwill to move the Cardinals from St. Louis to Phoenix for the 1988 NFL season. The team became the Phoenix Cardinals. They planned to play at Arizona State University's Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe temporarily, while a new stadium was being built. But the savings and loan crisis derailed financing for the stadium, and the Cardinals played at Arizona State for 18 years.
The Cardinals had missed the playoffs by a single game in their final season in St. Louis, and for much of the 1988 season they were poised to make the playoffs. At the end of week 11, they were 7–4 and in first place in the NFC East. However, they dropped their final five games to finish 7–9.
Bottom of the East The team got off to another strong start in 1989, with road victories over the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks, then suffered a rash of injuries. With five games to go in the season, Gene Stallings, who had followed the team from St. Louis, announced his plans to retire at the end of the season. But general manager Larry Wilson ordered Stallings to leave immediately, and named running backs coach Hank Kuhlmann as interim coach. The team lost its last five games to finish 5–11 – the first of four straight 11-loss seasons.
Joe Bugel, the architect of the Redskins' famous "Hogs" offensive line in the 1980s, coached the Cardinals from 1990 to 1993, usually finishing last in the dominant NFC East, which produced the Super Bowl winner in each of those seasons (Giants in 1990, Redskins in 1991, and the Cowboys in 1992–1993). Bugel's first three teams finished 5–11 in 1990 and 4–12 in both 1991 and 1992 before improving to 7–9 in 1993. During the 1993 season, the Cardinals outscored their opponents by 57 points, but suffered eight losses by seven points or less, five of those setbacks coming to playoff teams. A three-game winning streak to close the season, including a 17–6 triumph over the playoff-bound Giants, was not enough to save Bugel's job.
Adopting Arizona and first playoff push (1994–1998) In March 1994, Bill Bidwill bowed to fan preference and renamed the team the Arizona Cardinals. Bidwill had rebuffed earlier entreaties, citing the NFL's tradition of team names that identified home cities – even though the Cardinals did not actually play in Phoenix, and that the Minnesota Vikings and New England Patriots were longstanding exceptions (also, the Carolina Panthers were set to start play the following year). The rest of the NFL owners quickly approved the name change.
Buddy Ryan years Buddy Ryan replaced Bugel in 1994, also serving as his own general manager. With typical bluster, he declared, "You've got a winner in town."Pierre Mornell, "45 Effective Ways for Hiring Smart! : How to Predict Winners and Losers in the Incredibly Expensive People-Reading Game", p. 131, Ten Speed Press, 1998, He guaranteed victory in the 1994 week 3 game at the Cleveland Browns, which Cleveland subsequently won, 32–0. The Cardinals, who ranked third in the NFL in total defense in 1994 but suffered from a lack of consistency at quarterback, entered the final week of the season with an outside chance at a playoff berth, but a 10–6 loss to the Atlanta Falcons ended those hopes as Arizona finished 8–8.
The 1995 season saw the Cardinals drop to 4–12, including an embarrassing 27–7 loss to the expansion Carolina Panthers. Ryan was fired on December 26, less than 24 hours after the Cardinals lost 37–13 on Christmas Day to the Cowboys on Monday Night Football. Dallas returned to Sun Devil Stadium 34 days later and defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX, the first time both Arizona and a home field of the Cardinals franchise hosted the event.
Vince Tobin years Building a playoff team (1996–1997) Ryan was followed by Vince Tobin, who improved the Cardinals to 7–9 in 1996, led by defensive end Simeon Rice, the third overall pick who became the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year, and a rejuvenated Boomer Esiason at quarterback. Esiason threw for 522 yards in an overtime victory over the Washington Redskins in the Cardinals' final game at RFK Stadium, and two weeks later led a fourth-quarter comeback against the playoff-bound Philadelphia Eagles. The 1996 season also featured a lowlight: a 31–21 loss at home to the New York Jets, the only game the Jets won during a 1–15 season.
The Cardinals fell back to 4–12 in 1997, but that season saw the debut of rookie quarterback Jake Plummer, who the previous season guided Arizona State to a remarkable 11–0 regular season before falling just short of the national championship with a loss to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. The highlight of the 1997 season was a 25–22 overtime victory over the Dallas Cowboys in week 2, ending Dallas' 13-game winning streak over the Cardinals which dated back to 1990. But the team lost the next two games, falling to the Washington Redskins 19–13 in overtime in the first-ever game at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, and then 18–17 to the playoff-bound Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
First playoff year (1998)
During the 1998 season, Jake Plummer enjoyed his greatest stretch of success during his tenure with the franchise, in terms of victories at least, as his quarterback rating was still an average 75.0. The team during that time had once again been dubbed the Cardiac Cards by the local and national media as eight of their 16 regular-season games were decided by three points or less, and seven of those games ended in favor of the Cardinals. Solidifying their status as the team to beat in the clutch, the Cardinals, sporting a 6–7 record going into the 15th week, defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in overtime on a field goal by Chris Jacke, then returned home to defeat the New Orleans Saints by two and the San Diego Chargers by three to clinch a wild-card playoff berth.
The close calls and the fact that none of their victories had been to teams with winning records (New Orleans was the best of the group at 6–10; San Diego was 5–11 and Philadelphia 3–13) made them heavy underdogs going into their Wild Card Playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys. Considering their two regular season losses to the Cowboys and the fact that they had been on the losing end of 16 of the last 17 games against their division rivals, including 9 straight losses at Texas Stadium, the "Team of the Nineties" seemed to have history and ample statistical evidence on their side. To further the situation, the Cardinals franchise had not won a single playoff game since their title year of 1947, resulting in the longest active drought in professional sports history.
However, Arizona dominated the Cowboys on both ends of the football throughout the game. At Texas Stadium that afternoon, the Cardinals jumped out to a 10–0 halftime lead. The Cardinals would later increase that lead to 20–0 in the final minutes of the 4th quarter. The Cowboys' only score was a touchdown late in the 4th quarter, and the Cardinals held on for a 20–7 upset that wasn't even that close. The Cardinals, who had suffered for 51 years as the NFL's doormat (and having never won or hosted any playoff games during their tenure in St. Louis), finally had a playoff win. However, any celebration was short lived as the Cardinals fell in the divisional round of the playoffs to the Minnesota Vikings who possessed a 15–1 record as well as the highest scoring offense in NFL history at the time. The Vikings won the game 41–21 in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis.
Regressing to the basement (1999–2006) The Cardinals did not win more than seven games in any season between 1999 and 2006, and had one of the worst yearly attendance records in the NFL. Sun Devil Stadium gained a reputation for being one of the quietest stadiums in the NFL during the Cardinals' tenure there (which stood in decided contrast to Sun Devil home games). The few fans who did show up for games were most often rooting for the away team, creating "home games" on the road for many opposing teams—a phenomenon most noticeable when teams with great national followings, such as the Packers, Bears, 49ers, Raiders, Redskins, Steelers and Cowboys, came into town. A significant percentage of the state's residents only live there during the winter and live elsewhere for the rest of the year, and many of Arizona's permanent residents either grew up in other states or have roots outside the state.
End of Tobin's tenure Coming off their playoff run in 1998, the Cardinals were expected to do bigger and better things in 1999, but a tough schedule ranked in the top 5 as well as key injuries returned the team to their losing ways, getting off to a 2–6 start. However, the Cardinals would make another run, winning 4 straight games to get back into the playoff chase, but it was not meant to be; Arizona lost their last 4 games to finish with a disappointing 6–10 record.
The next season had a worrisome preview with a 1–3 record in the preseason preceding a 2–5 start by Arizona. After a 48–7 blowout loss to a team they had previously beaten, a 2–4 Cowboys team led by new head coach Dave Campo, Bidwell fired Tobin, the coach who had won the Cardinals their first playoff game since 1947, ending his head coaching career with a 28–43 record. The coaching change did not improve the team's record, instead leading to it plummeting to a franchise low 3–13. Two of their wins were by only one point, and the team had a franchise worst minus-233 point differential. The team also posted a negative-24 turnover differential, one of the worst in NFL history.
Return to the bottom of the East Tobin was fired during the 2000 season and replaced by existing defensive coordinator Dave McGinnis, who remained head coach until his firing in 2003; McGinnis compiled a win–loss record of 17–40 during his tenure. In McGinnis' second game as head coach, Aeneas Williams tied an NFL record by returning a fumble 104 yards for a touchdown in a 16–15 victory over the Redskins. This would be his only win that season. Other notable victories during McGinnis' tenure included a 34–31 overtime victory over the Oakland Raiders in 2001 in the Cardinals' first-ever visit to Oakland, and an 18–17 triumph in the final game of the 2003 season over the Minnesota Vikings, in which Josh McCown threw the game-winning touchdown pass to Nate Poole with no time left on the clock, eliminating the Vikings from the playoffs.
Bottom of the West In 2002, the addition of the Houston Texans caused the NFL to realign into eight divisions of four teams each. After 32 years of being in the NFC East, and having been located in an Eastern conference or division since the NFL began conference play in 1933, the Cardinals were finally moved to the NFC West with the 49ers, Seahawks, and Rams, which made far more sense from a geographical standpoint. This also gave new life to the Cardinals-Rams rivalry, one of the oldest matchups in NFL history, with the added dimension that the Rams had moved to St. Louis and built the indoor arena Bidwell had been denied while the Cardinals still played on a collegiate field.