And then there were 2 !!!!!

[BIGDADDY_REDBIRD]

With the departure of frank Sanders whom I admired alot, there remains only Ron McKinnon & Chris Dishman on the roster from our playoff victory in 98. (Not incuding Emmitt Smith ) What does this say about our team??? I know in this era of FA, nothing is certain but change..(per coach Mac) somehow we've manage to keep the coaching staff somewhat intact from the Tobin era just this year there has been some coaching moves. Basically this is close to a 100 percent overhaul of a very young & promising playoff team. When will we stop this dreaded cycle of losing our draft picks after preparing, & developing them???

 

[Jim O]

Originally posted by bigdaddy_redbird
With the departure of frank Sanders whom I admired alot, there remains only Ron McKinnon & Chris Dishman on the roster from our playoff victory in 98. (Not incuding Emmitt Smith ) What does this say about our team??? I know in this era of FA, nothing is certain but change..(per coach Mac) somehow we've manage to keep the coaching staff somewhat intact from the Tobin era just this year there has been some coaching moves. Basically this is close to a 100 percent overhaul of a very young & promising playoff team. When will we stop this dreaded cycle of losing our draft picks after preparing, & developing them???

Scott Player! Don't forget the punter!

 

[ChiCard]

Believe me when I say I'm not being sarcastic in saying this but maybe the fact that the "young play-off team" didn't do "sh**" for the last 4 years had something to do with it. I'm glad they cleaned house.

 

[Cardinals.Ken]

I don't know if there is a good way to answer that BigDaddy...all I can say is that I hope the current regime of Graves & Mac will take note of that fact, and make better personnel decisions in the future...

In my opinion though, the dismantling of the '98 playoff team began right after that season, when Lomas Brown, Jamir Miller, and Larry Centers were all given (in one way or another) their walking papers. As far as I was concerned, that gutted out the veteran leadership of the ballclub. Add to that, the unwarranted fat contract extention given to Plummer (yes, I said it back then as well) was too much too soon. Plummer was handed "the keys" to the team a couple of years before I believe he was ready.

 

[BIGDADDY_REDBIRD]

Scott Player played that day???? good points Cardinal.Ken.... That is exactly when it started to fall apart. But everything looked so good because we we're young & we had the 9th & 21st picks in the up coming draft that year.... Everyone was talking how it looked liked the lowly Cardinals had finally turned the corner wish I had a nickel for everytime I heard that

 

[SECTION 11]

Originally posted by ChiCard
Believe me when I say I'm not being sarcastic in saying this but maybe the fact that the "young play-off team" didn't do "sh**" for the last 4 years had something to do with it. I'm glad they cleaned house.

dismantling a double digit loss football team is fine by me.

 

[kerouac9]

For what it's worth, I don't think we can any longer compare the success of the 97-98 playoff team with anything the Cards do from last year forward.

Why, you ask? Because the 97-98 team benefited from a great, last-place schedule. We played just awful, awful teams the entire season, and just squeaked into the playoffs with a last-second field goal. Place this against following "outhouse to penthouse" teams like the 98 Falcons, 99 Rams, 00 Ravens, and 01 Pats. The Rams and Pats won their divisions with soft schedules, and the Ravens went to the wild card going away in a pretty tough division (expansion Browns notwithstanding).

What has changed? Expansion and re-alignment created a new, balanced schedule which means that there are only two "at large" games each season, as opposed to the 8 in the pre 2002 era. Each team in a division plays 14 common opponents now (6 home/away games in division, 4 against in-conference division, 4 against out-of-conference division), and that means that it's going to be a lot harder for teams to go from cellar to stellar in a year with a good FA period and good draft.

It's a whole new ballgame for the Cards now, and that means that we're going to have to build a good team and stay good, because we're not going to get any relief in the division from a soft schedule.