RIP Coach Dennis Green
Rest in peace, Coach Green, you glorious man you. Dennis Green doesn’t get enough credit and never really did. Green was the second black coach in the NFL, ever, and he did wonderful things with the Minnesota Vikings organization. I remember first getting really deep into football around the time Green was the coach and almost switched over to the Vikings as a fan thanks to his teams and their incredible offenses. The Randall to Randy show in 98 was something to behold and might have been more fun to watch than either of the only two offenses to ever eclipse it (2007 Pats and 2013 Broncos). Man, I loved the Vikes as a kid. Glad I never switched teams fully, that would have ended in some heartbreak. A lot. Still root for them though, they are the best NFC North team.
Poor Dennis had Andy Reid Syndrome in Minnesota. The classic case of the coach who is good enough to consistently reach the playoffs but not the top. They tend to become victims of their own success because fans get complacent with the playoff appearances and the playoff losses start to feel like missing the playoffs somehow. Football is such a chaotic sport (thats why we love it so) and fans really should learn to be more appreciative of a coach who gets the team to the dance every season. That’s all a team needs. A chance. Several teams have proven that. If your coach can get you those chances, he’s a good coach. But Green was fired after one down year after 5 consecutive playoff appearances. Short sighted and I’m sure Vikings fans are still unhappy about it.
It’s also a shame that Dennis Green is more or less famous not for his success but for a single angry tirade after a loss to the Chicago Bears when his Arizona Cardinals flubbed an easy win over a mistake prone Bears team led by THE SEX DRAGON (but not on his best day). Green went into the press conference and yelled THEY WERE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE AND WE LET THEM OFF THE HOOK. From that point on, Green was a meme, and his professional coaching career more or less ended. After that season he was fired and never coached in the NFL again. I can’t imagine how the man must have felt after watching one of the worst team meltdowns in history, he didn’t deserve his fate for that. Although at least in some ways, Dennis Green can live on forever thanks to that clip, as now it is a part of NFL lore.
Now we just have to wait for Jim Mora to die and I can write the exact same blog post with a few details changed.
Ooyah. Right in the feels.
So long Coach.
I FOUND SEXY REXY IN THE FLESH! DON’T TEASE ME LIKE THIS DAVE
I dew say that we shouldn’t forget Dennis Green’s great run with the vikes in the 1990s, and we should remember him less for the mountain dew minutes of an epic tirade that summed up everything cardinals before Kurt Warner almost got his second ring.
The season that made me the lifelong Vikings fan that I am was 1998. It also introduced me to the heartbreak I would continuously experience as a Vikes fan. A few years ago I found my diary from ’98 and so many of the entries were about how awesome Denny Green and the Vikings were. He brought the silver age of the team and showed us we didn’t have to be a futile dumpster fire like the Lions or Browns. RIP Denny, you did good.
If anyone comes over here from r/vikings I sent them here. RIP Denny. Bud Grant is the Legend Coach in Minnesota, and if Zimmer wins some SuperBowls he’ll be contender for best Vikings coach ever. That forever underrates Denny. To have a team play as well as he got it to is damn difficult and that (and he) should never be forgotten.
We need more football heaven segments. RIP Dennis Green, and I hope you find eternal joy riffing on the Lions game films.
His tirade will go down as one of the greatest in the history of the sport. Rip.
If it wasn’t for the lightning in a bottle 98 Dirty Birds, the Vikes would’ve won a super bowl against old horse and the Broncos.
I don’t think it would’ve been a gimme, the 98 Broncos were a damn good team and the best Broncos team ever. While they didn’t match the Vikings’ 556 points, they did score 501 points and Terrell Davis had 2,000 yards in an MVP season.
The Broncos would have won anyway, just that the Vikings probably could have put up a better fight than the Falcons had but lets face it, when’s the last time anyone can trust the Vikings to do anything?
Gary Anderson changed this man’s place in NFL history.
I turned the TV on Saturday morning and me and my brother shouted “WHAT?” in near unison. My dad didn’t believe it either.
Denny Green always felt like the offensive Marty Schottenheimer to me. He was good at doing head coach stuff, like managing egos, gameplanning, and clock management, and he was a wizard on his side of the ball, but he tended to ignore the other side and approach it too conservatively to win consistently when his side failed to execute well. Also, he was one bad break away from taking a sad sack franchise to a Super Bowl.
Still, a much better coach than he gets credit for. Too far attenuated from Bill Walsh to get some of the reflected shine, like Andy Reid does, and never coached a “brand” team or one in a big market. If he did with the mid-90s Giants what he did with the Vikings he’d be better remembered.
As a Bills fan “They tend to become victims of their own success because fans get complacent with the playoff appearances and the playoff losses start to feel like missing the playoffs somehow. ” point me at these people so I may show them 17 years of salt.