Green’s family posted a message on the Cardinals website on Friday, July 22, 2016, announcing the death.
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Green spent 10 seasons in Minnesota, leading the Vikings to eight playoff appearances and two NFC championship games.
The leader of the record-setting 1998 Minnesota Vikings has died.
After parting with the Vikings, Green spent three seasons as head coach of the Arizona Cardinals.
In 1992, the Vikings hired him as their head coach, making him the second African-American to ever hold that position in the NFL. The 67-year-old Green died of cardiac arrest. The Vikings had winning seasons each year of his reign, until his final season in 2001 when they went 5-10. He was a special teams coordinator with the 49ers for a season and later their wide receivers coach for three seasons in the 1980s. “We express our deepest sympathy to his family and friends”.
“After talking to Walsh, I had just heard at that time that Mike Holmgren was going to Green Bay, and I said to Walsh, ‘What’s the difference between Holmgren and Denny Green?’ And he said, ‘I think of them the same'”.
The number of yards that Larry Fitzgerald, who the Cardinals used the 2004 No. 3 overall pick on, has in his career. He made one of the most cherished and lucrative destination jobs in professional sports – National Football League head coach – a possibility for many African-American men who never thought such a chance was real. Green, in an unhinged, nutty rant, uttered the immortal lines “The Bears are who we thought they were!” and “If you want to crown ’em, crown ’em!” before smacking the microphone and storming out of the room.
Green got his first head coaching job at Northwestern in 1981. As for that outburst after the Bears beat Green’s Cardinals, Shu says it just showed his intensity. He returned three years later as the head coach of the Cardinals from 2004 through 2006.
Green was also an avid drummer, and Moss said on ESPN’s “NFL Live” that “we had a team and one thing he taught us was to play to one beat”. That made him only the third African-American to be named head coach of an NFL team, and second in the league’s modern era; prior to Green, pioneering NFL player Fritz Pollard coached in the 1920s, and Art Shell was named head coach of the Los Angeles (now Oakland) Raiders in 1989.
It’s clear that Moss had affection for his former head coach – check out this brilliant impression of Green during in the “30 for 30” on Moss.
“Freer spirit for the team in its entirety, Dennis Green himself liked to have a good time, so the players exuded that same type of good time atmosphere”, said Boyer.
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“I’ve known Denny all of my adult life”, Wood said.
