Rest in peace, Dennis Green. Green’s best season came in 1998 when the Vikings went 15-1. KARE 11’s Randy Shaver covered the coach for many years. He also broke Northwestern’s NCAA-record 34-game losing streak.
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In 1999, Green hired Wood to be his quarterbacks coach while the former was the head of the Minnesota Vikings. Afterward, in one of the more memorable postgame rants by an National Football League coach, Green pounded the podium and yelled “The Bears are who we thought they were!” afterward, a line that would be replayed endlessly over the years.
Green spent 17 years as a coach in the NFL. Green’s teams went 3-0 against the Fins, topping them at home with the Vikings in 1994 and 2000 and beating them with the Cardinals at what was then Pro Player Stadium back in 2004.
He finished with a 16-32 record at Arizona, none of his teams winning more than six games in his three seasons. “I told him, ‘Yes.’ Just hearing about him passing today and reading a lot of the comments and a lot of the positive things that people are saying, Denny Green was just that”.
This marks the second former Cardinals head coach to pass away this summer, following the death of Buddy Ryan in June. “Denny stuck his neck out and activated me, put me on the roster in Minnesota to protect me because he knew I was part of the future and that really meant a lot to me”, remembered Liwienski. 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.
Green resigned from NU after the 1985 season with a five-year record of 10-45 to take an assistant coaching job with the 49ers under his mentor, Bill Walsh. “Coach Green will rightly be remembered as a true innovator, leader and pioneer among football coaches”.
Troy Vincent, the NFL executive vice president of football operations, said in a statement: “We are saddened to hear the news of Dennis Green’s passing. We express our deepest sympathy to his family and friends”.
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However, that’s not what most associate when it comes to Dennis Green and the Chicago Bears. Ultimately it was that lack of success and the feeling that the Vikings were missing at least one Super Bowl ring in his tenure that ended Green’s time in Minnesota even though he had a 97-62 record with a postseason mark of 4-8. On the day of his hiring, Green, in charismatic fashion, announced, “There’s a new sheriff in town”. Was looking forward to saying thanks at HOF.
