I have not heard this one before.
The history of the Arizona Cardinals is littered with what-if scenarios, including the time they almost acquired Steve Young.
raisingzona.com
A crazy story about how the Cardinals almost landed Steve Young
The history of the Arizona Cardinals is littered with what-if scenarios, including the time they almost acquired Steve Young.
As the league’s oldest team, the Chicago/St.Louis/Arizona Cardinals have the deepest amount of history to sort through. The Cardinals have been around since 1898, yet their history doesn’t get much attention as they haven’t won a championship since 1947.
There are bound to be some misses when you’ve been around for 124 seasons. Unfortunately, the Cardinals have had their fair share of those, particularly when it comes to the quarterback position. You’re probably wondering why the article is about Steve Young, but Joe Namath is at the top of this page.
Namath was drafted by the Cardinals in 1965, but he never ended up playing for the franchise for a number of reasons. What ended up happening with Namath is comparable to what happened in the offseason of 1987 with Young.
Young had spent the 1985 and 1986 seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their glorious creamsicle-orange uniforms. His performance didn’t match the beauty of their uniforms, as he led the team to a 3-16 record in his two years with the franchise.
These struggles were just some of the many difficulties Tampa Bay faced when the late Hugh Culverhouse owned the team.
Culverhouse was known to be cheap and a penny pincher that even his own children knew about it, and they weren’t afraid to contribute to a book about his “Eugene Krabs” set of ways.
So how did the then-St. Louis Cardinals have Steve Young for a moment, but then they didn’t? Let’s jump in the time machine and head back to the 1987 offseason and find out why.
From 1986 to 1987, the Cardinals posted a record of 11-19-1, including a -133 point differential in 1986. Neil Lomax was the team’s quarterback and had been part of the team that experienced great strides and regressions in terms of total offense from 1981 to 1987.
The Cardinals also dealt with a threat from one of the players on the MLB’s St.Louis Cardinals team in 1987. That one player turned out to be Jack Clark, who claimed he would hit baseballs at the “scab/backup” players when they were clearing the field for the baseball team to practice.
The Cardinals tried to flip Lomax to the Los Angeles Raiders, but that never happened despite an old press release saying otherwise. Lomax’s introduction is vital to the story, as the Cardinals wanted to get rid of him and find someone new.
Enter Tampa Bay’s Steve Young, a second-year player out of BYU. According to records, the Cardinals were ready to give up their first-round pick (sixth overall) to get Young out of Tampa.
When Gene Stallings originally had his guy in Young, the Cardinals were undoubtedly excited to get one of the more talented passers in the league.
That was until Young found out about it from then-Buccaneers head coach Ray Perkins. Below is how Young reacted.
I get a call from [Bucs coach] Ray Perkins. He said, “Congratulations, you’re a St. Louis Cardinal.” I called [agent Leigh Steinberg]. He told me the Cardinals had offered the Buccaneers their first-round pick for me. That meant Tampa would have the first and second picks overall. Perkins had his eye on Alabama’s All-American linebacker, Cornelius Bennett. I told Lee there was no way I was going to St. Louis. The Cardinals were another team that was going nowhere.
But I didn’t sit back and wait. I immediately called [Bucs owner] Hugh Culverhouse. I didn’t even give him a chance to say hello. “You traded me to the Cardinals? You tell me I’m your quarterback for life and you send me to the Cardinals? You can’t do that to me!”
Young was not happy, and neither side was ready for the fallout of what would happen past this point. Nevertheless, it was a turning point for four franchises. Two benefitted from this change, and two did not.
What happened after Steve Young found out he was potentially being traded to the Cardinals? Young’s agent, Leigh Stenberg, called Hugh Culverhouse and threatened that Young would retire if that trade happened.
Alas, Culverhouse called Bill Bidwill and the Cardinals and canceled the trade. Young went on to be traded to the San Francisco 49ers for a second and third-round pick.
The Green Bay Packers were the other team that put their hat in the ring for Young in 1987, but they drafted Don Majkowski that year, which led, in turn, to Brett Favre replacing him, and the rest is history.
Young went on to win three Super Bowl rings with San Francisco, but none bigger than the team’s Super Bowl XXIX smashmouth victory over the San Diego Chargers, where Young famously proclaimed, “Get the monkey off my back!” referring to his ability to win a ring without Joe Montana on the roster.
It’s also ironic (for lack of a better word) that the Cardinals ended Young’s career after basically restarting it for him. Aeneas Williams laid a hit on Young so hard during a Monday night game in 1999 that it was the signal for the quarterback to hang up the cleats.
Once again, context reigns supreme. Green Bay and San Francisco both won Super Bowl rings in the 90s. Meanwhile, Tampa Bay selected quarterback Vinny Testaverde (who became the original journeyman signal-caller) with the first overall pick in 1987, and the Cardinals selected Kelly Stouffer out of Colorado State with the No. 6 pick in a stunner.
According to some draft experts, Stouffer was viewed as a second or even a third-round pick, and the selection was considered a reach at the time.
However, Stouffer came in at 6-foot-3 and he ran his 40-yard dash in 4.9 seconds, making him (at the time) probably the most athletic quarterback the Cardinals had ever drafted.
But it gets worse. Bill Bidwill was the team’s de facto general manager at the time. Bidwill had a history of being cheap and this was made clear when he was the first NFL owner to demand public funds be used to build a new stadium.
Unfortunately, Bidwill played it cheap with Stouffer’s contract negotiations as well, and it led to a holdout by the rookie quarterback.
To stay ready for the NFL, Stouffer would spend his time in his tiny hometown of Rushville, Nebraska, a town of just over 1,250 people at that time.
First, Stouffer would work out for two hours each day in the morning. Then after the practices had concluded at his high school for the day, he would throw 100 footballs into the curtain of the stage that overlooked the gym.
Kelly Stouffer refused to sign a contract after Bill Bidwill said that the Cardinals as a franchise “owned him,” and the young quarterback wound up being traded to the Seattle Seahawks.
But, much like how the Cardinals drafted Joe Namath and then lost him to the Jets, they had failed in contract negotiations once again.
Now Stouffer didn’t have the best career at all, nor did he guarantee a Super Bowl win like Namath. The Cardinals’ replacement for Namath was Charley Johnson, who had some success in his career, but Stouffer did not.
What hurts even more about this trade is that when the Seahawks did trade for Stouffer, the deal was missing one key player and that was star safety Kenny Easley. Easley would have a short career in the NFL, but he did end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
However, the Cardinals may have saved Easley’s life. He was originally sent in the trade to St.Louis, but he failed his physical when it was revealed he had a rare kidney condition.
Easley was one of the hardest hitters in the league and he claimed that the Seahawks’ doctors and athletic trainers told him to keep taking ibuprofen to help with any pain, which is what the safety contributes to his kidneys failing.
He is still doing well and he reconciled his ways with Seattle after getting a legal settlement. But just imagine what could have happened with Easley in the secondary for a Cardinals team that desperately needed a defensive leader at the time.
Imagine if Steve Young had never said no to a trade to the Cardinals. Imagine if Bill Bidwill hadn’t been so cheap during contract negotiations. Imagine what could have been the trajectory of this team.
It all seems to come down to the “woulda, shoulda, coulda” with the Cardinals. But, in the end, the franchise gradually got better down the road once the team was in the hands of Bidwill’s son, Michael.
Ever since Michael took over, the team has enjoyed the most success since they last won a championship.
This time, they have a young franchise quarterback in Kyler Murray who didn’t hold out. But with the current state of his contract negotiations, the Cardinals need to be careful.
Let’s hope that they build around Murray and remember the mistakes from their history. If they do not, then they are doomed to repeat it for the third time.