Last Saturday a plump old fellow sporting a string tie walked
into a crowd of Cardinals fans who had gathered at Rockin' Rodeo
in Tempe to watch the NFL draft on a huge TV screen. The 2,500
attendees rose as one.
In the 10 years since he moved the Cardinals from St. Louis to
Arizona, owner Bill Bidwill has received few standing ovations.
Not that he has deserved many. After relocating the team, he
priced many fans out of Sun Devil Stadium with the highest
average ticket price in the league. He has delivered exactly
zero winning seasons. He has failed in his bid to get a new
stadium.
The 67-year-old Bidwill, however, is finally on the rise in the
estimation of Cardinals fans. In February 1997 he handed
football operations to street-smart scouting veteran Bob
Ferguson, and on day one of this year's draft, Bidwill was wise
enough to turn away bids for the No. 3 pick, including a
tempting 11th-hour offer from the Cowboys. Arizona used the
choice to take Florida State defensive end Andre Wadsworth, the
closest thing to Bruce Smith the league has seen since Smith
came out of Virginia Tech 13 years ago. Now, after an
uncharacteristically productive off-season, the Cardinals seem
poised to contend in the NFC East for the first time since new
return threat Eric Metcalf's dad, Terry, carried the mail for
Don Coryell's Cardiac Cards in St. Louis. "With what they've
done," Dolphins coach Jimmy Johnson said last Saturday night,
"they've gone from an also-ran to a contender pretty quick."
Sold on Plummer, the Cardinals didn't have to shop for a
quarterback in the draft.
(John Iacono)
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Aside from throwing $2.75 million a year at so-so free-agent
guard Lester Holmes, Arizona, which went 4-12 last season, has
upgraded its roster, at running back (1,000-yard rusher Adrian
Murrell, acquired in a predraft trade with the Jets, replaces
Leeland McElroy as starter), third receiver-return man (Metcalf,
brought in by a March trade with the Chargers, supplants Kevin
Williams) and left defensive end (Wadsworth takes over for Brad
Ottis). The Cardinals re-signed defensive tackle Eric Swann for
the relative bargain price of $5 million a year and committed to
quarterback Jake Plummer, the former Arizona State star whom the
Cards stole in the second round of the '97 draft.
"Getting Jake last year was the key to everything," says the
47-year-old Ferguson, who worked for the Seahawks, Cowboys,
Bills and Broncos before landing with the Cardinals. Having
Plummer on board enabled Arizona, which originally had the
second pick, to ignore quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Ryan
Leaf, trade down one spot and still get Wadsworth. To swap
places with Arizona, the quarterback-desperate Chargers gave up
two players (Metcalf and linebacker Patrick Sapp), a
second-round choice this year and next year's No. 1. Who knows?
If San Diego, with Leaf learning on the job, struggles mightily
and hands the Cardinals a top five pick next April, Arizona may
end up with a chance to grab the franchise back they've been
seeking for years, Ricky Williams of Texas.
Of course, no four-win team addresses all its weaknesses in one
off-season. The offensive line still looks leaky—Plummer was
sacked a league-high 5.2 times per game in 10 appearances last
year—and there are holes at linebacker and safety. But the
defensive front should be the NFL's best, with Wadsworth and the
athletic Simeon Rice on the outside and 300-pound tackles Swann
and Mark Smith (six sacks in 1997) in the middle. "I want to go
out and prove I'm a Bruce Smith-type player," Wadsworth said on
Saturday from his family's home in St. Croix. "If I am, then
this line ought to be able to go out and wreak havoc. And with
Jake running our offense, this team's going places."
If Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had had his way, Wadsworth would
have gone to Dallas. On the day before the draft, Jones proposed
this swap: the Cowboys' first-round selections in 1998 (the
eighth pick) and '99, plus a second-rounder this year, for
Arizona's top choice. "I'm convinced that some of the best
trades are the ones you don't make," Ferguson said on Saturday.
"You don't get a chance to pick the Bruce Smiths, the Deion
Sanderses very often—maybe once every 10 years. Plus, you think
I want to hand Jerry Jones the Super Bowl again? That's what
we'd be doing by trading him Wadsworth."
In 1987 Ferguson, then the Bills' director of pro personnel,
persuaded Buffalo coach Marv Levy to trade three high draft
choices and running back Greg Bell for the rights to linebacker
Cornelius Bennett. On Saturday, however, Ferguson was prepared
to leave blood—his own—on the walls of the Cardinals' war room
if trade talks for the No. 3 pick heated up. "They could fire me
tomorrow," a drained Ferguson said at the end of the day, "but
that's how I have to do it. I know we've got this team headed in
the right direction. We've got two first-round picks in 1999, a
local quarterback icon, an excellent coaching staff and young
players dying to win."
Issue date: April 27, 1998
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