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Dennis Green 1949-2016

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• published: 22 Jul 2016
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Dennis "Denny" Green (February 17, 1949 – July 22, 2016) was an American football coach. During his National Football League career, Green coached the Minnesota Vikings and Arizona Cardinals. Green's best season in Minnesota was in 1998, when the record-setting Vikings finished 15–1 and set the NFL record for most points in a season (since broken by the 2007 New England Patriots and the 2013 Denver Broncos). However, the Vikings lost in the NFC Championship Game, 30–27 to the Atlanta Falcons in overtime. Prior to Tony Dungy's victory in Super Bowl XLI, Green's 1998 season was the most successful season ever recorded by an African-American coach in the NFL. Despite compiling a record of 97–62 in the regular season with the Vikings, Green was unable to reach the Super Bowl. Green grew up in a working class household in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His father was a postal worker and his mother a beautician. His father died when Green was 11 and his mother died when he was 13. Green has said that he was in attendance at the March 2, 1962 NBA game in Hershey, Pennsylvania where Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points. Green attended John Harris High School (now Harrisburg High School) in Harrisburg, and graduated cum laude from the University of Iowa with a BA in finance. According to Green, he was planning to be a high school teacher if his football career didn't pan out. In college he started as halfback in each of his three seasons with the Iowa Hawkeyes. Green played briefly for the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League in 1971, then worked as an assistant coach at the University of Dayton, University of Iowa and Stanford University, initially under Bill Walsh. In 1981, Green was named the head coach of Northwestern University, a school that had gone 1-31-1 in its last 33 games. In 1981, he was only the second African American head coach in Division I-A history (the previous coach, Willie Jeffries, coached at Wichita State, which no longer has a football team) He left Northwestern in 1985, doing a stint as receivers coach for the San Francisco 49ers under his former boss at Stanford, Bill Walsh. In 1989, Green took the head coaching position at Stanford University, inheriting a team that had graduated 17 of its 21 starters from 1988. Green led the Cardinal from 1989 to 1991. During that time, his teams finished with an overall record of 16–18, a .471 winning percentage, going 3–0 in the Big Game against the California Golden Bears. In 1990, his Stanford team defeated the top-ranked Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. His tenure culminated with an 8–3 record (Stanford's best since 1986). A loss to Washington in the opening game of the season was the deciding factor for the Pac-10 championship. The Cardinal made an appearance in the 1991 Aloha Bowl, where his team lost to Georgia Tech on a last-minute touchdown. Green was a disciple of Bill Walsh's West Coast offense and was touted by Walsh and other NFL pundits as a likely candidate to be the second African-American head coach in the NFL. On January 10, 1992, Green was named 5th head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, replacing the retiring Jerry Burns. The day he was introduced as the Vikings' head coach, he announced that there was a "new sheriff in town". He would be only the second African American head coach after Art Shell in the modern NFL era, and only the third of all time after Fritz Pollard and Shell. The high point of Green's Vikings career was the 1998 season, when the team went 15–1 and set the NFL record for the most points scored in a season (the 2013 Denver Broncos under John Fox currently hold this record). The Vikings advanced to the NFC Championship game, losing to the Atlanta Falcons after Atlanta's Morten Andersen made a field goal in overtime. The Vikings bought out Green's contract on January 4, 2002. After spending two seasons as an analyst for ESPN, Green was hired as head coach by the Arizona Cardinals on January 7, 2004. Through his first two years with the team, Green totaled 11 wins with the Cardinals and finishing 3rd and 2nd in the NFC West, an improvement over predecessor Dave McGinnis. Unlike his previous two seasons, the 2006 season began with great expectations for the Cardinals with the opening of a new stadium, sellout crowds, the drafting of quarterback Matt Leinart, and the signing of Pro Bowl running back Edgerrin James. After a solid start, the Cardinals suffered some tough early losses. On January 1, 2007, the Cardinals fired Green with a year left on his contract. In August 2007, the Westwood One radio network announced that it had hired Green to serve as a color analyst on their Thursday night NFL broadcasts. Green passed away on July 22, 2016, from cardiac arrest at the age of 67.