Longtime NFL coach Dennis Green passed away on Thursday night at the age of 67.
Advertisement
The Cardinals announced that the cause of death was a heart attack, but other details were not immediately disclosed.
Dennis Green was a father figure, mentor and coach to football players for the majority of his life.
January 10, 1992: Green is hired by the Vikings, becoming the second black head coach in the NFL’s modern era, following the Raiders’ Art Shell. Most mentions of his name are quickly followed by the refrain: “The Bears are what we thought they were”.
After coaching at Stanford from 1989 to 1991, Green left for the National Football League where he compiled a 113-94 record as the head coach of the Vikings and Cardinals. “I lost my mother in April, I feel like I just lost father”, Smith tweeted. Green’s Vikings made eight playoff appearances in 10 seasons from 1992 to 2001; with the team reaching the NFC Championship Game in 1998 and 2000. “He was my wide receiver coach for so many years and we stayed friends over the years also”, he said in a phone interview.
Green’s famous rant following a game while he was head coach in Arizona remains a classic 11 years later.
Green, a tough halfback at Iowa who grew up in Harrisburg, Pa., was on Walsh’s staff at Stanford and went to the San Francisco 49ers with Walsh in 1979.
The Arizona Cardinals confirmed Green’s passing on Twitter.
He only had one losing season and compiled an overall record of 97-62, including a 15-1 regular season in 1998 spearheaded by a record-setting offense, a mark second only to Bud Grant in franchise history. In 1981, Green took on the role of head coach at Northwestern, a program that had gone 3-51 in the four seasons prior to his arrival.
“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'”.
However, that’s not what most associate when it comes to Dennis Green and the Chicago Bears.
“There were a lot of great coaches, and Denny was one of them”, Young told The Chronicle.
But on this day of remembrance Green should be praised for the success he had in Minnesota, not for whatever went wrong in Arizona. He was also part of the storied coaching corps assembled by 49ers’ head coach Bill Walsh in the 1980s, a group that produced a number of successful National Football League head coaches, including Mr.
Advertisement
But one coaching stop in Green’s career has been largely overlooked: engineering the 1980 Stanford Cardinal offense, with sophomore quarterback John Elway. “Not many guys are truly invested with their players, and Denny always was”.
