Cards must learn from history

Cards must learn from history
January 3
Arizona Republic columnist Dan Bickley
"For the past three years, Vince Tobin has been a familiar face in the crowd, one of many season-ticket holders cheering on the Cardinals.

Today, he becomes the cautionary tale.

"I've always said it's harder to build a playoff-caliber team than it is to stay a playoff-caliber team," said Tobin, who coached the Cardinals to their first playoff appearance in Arizona. "Once you get there, you just add to your nucleus and you should have a good chance. That's the thing we let slip."

Get past all the temporary excitement and here's the sobering truth about the Cardinals: Their biggest flaw is not their offensive line or collective immaturity. It's the quality of upper management. It's the lack of accomplished football people making tough football decisions, and in the coming months some heavyweight questions must be knocked out.

If not, history could clone itself, and that's never a good thing with this franchise.

You know the story. Ten years ago our Cardinals made the playoffs for the first time. They smothered the Cowboys in Dallas. As Jake Plummer's parents celebrated in an empty Texas bar, the team returned home to thousands of euphoric fans waiting at the airport. The Dallas Morning News sifted through the wreckage and proclaimed the Cardinals the team of the future in the NFC East.

That kind of validation from a football market such as Dallas was the crowning moment for Cardinals fans. Yet in the ensuing off-season, the team cut out the heart (Lomas Brown and Jamir Miller), and soul (Larry Centers) of the operation. They had no idea what losing passionate leaders would do to the program.

They didn't post another winning record until this season.

"You just can't plug in a new guy here and a new guy there and think it will still work out," Brown said. "It's the chemistry you develop. When we won in 1998, it was on chemistry we began to develop in 1996. It's a process. You have to learn to trust guys around you. And when they let myself, Jamir and Larry go, that was about the end of it."

These Cardinals seem to have a bright future. They have a smart coaching staff, a great nucleus of wide receivers, an experienced quarterback and a rising playmaker in rookie Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. Here are the issues:

Kurt Warner is a free agent, and if he is re-signed, Matt Leinart surely will ask for a trade. Edgerrin James is on his way out, leaving the team without an established running back. Anquan Boldin has two years left on his contract, and his stance has not changed one bit. He believes the organization lied to him, and his situation needs to be resolved.

The Cardinals easily could fool themselves. They might believe the development of Steve Breaston, along with Warner's uncanny ability to read defenses and spread the ball around, would minimize Boldin's absence.

That would be stupid. That would be like losing Centers all over again."


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