The Cardinals 1980 season was nearly over before it even got going. In 1979 St Louis picked up quarterback Mike Loyd as a possible eventual replacement for the veteran Jim Hart. Loyd ended his career completing 17.9% of his passes, and with a 9.4 quarterback rating, and barring an injury to Hart, Loyd will likely never see a snap in the Tecmo Legacy League (TLL). Some inside the Cardinal organization feel as though Hart his far past his prime, yet the sentiment coming from the same camp is that management is going to allow Hart to ride out his career as a Cardinal, shuffling off on his own time.

Hart did quietly have an excellent 1979 season, throwing 27 TDs to only 3 INTs, as St Louis narrowly missed the playoffs. 1980 is a different story all together. The baby faced Hart is anything but a young man. Through seven games the Cardinals have has many wins and ties, as Hart does touchdowns: ONE. What has happened? Well, for one the Cardinals changed coaches, from deadfaulkner to cheapcatch, and word is cheapcatch doesn’t have the same confidence in Hart as Faulkner did. The current coach denies this accusation, citing, ‘If you look at the film, we’ve allowed Hart to air it out. The plays just aren’t being made.’ Workhorse running back Ottis Anderson is second in the league rushing, but realizes the team needs more out of Hart if they are to finish with some semblance of a satisfactory season. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with Hart. I don’t know what’s going on with the management, and the direction of this team. I’m out of answers.’ Word is that opposition to simply allowing Hart to ride out his career on his own accord exists within the Cardinal brass, with the thought being that St Louis should plan on selecting a legitimate, high-round quarterback in the 1981 draft, beginning a new era under a young signal caller.

The Cardinals wasteful 1980 season has a few silver linings. St Louis has largely been competitive, losing two out of their five games to SKP contests, while losing in overtime to the Eagles and tying the Oilers. The central source of the competitiveness is a defense that is giving up a respectable 14 points per game in MAN contests.

This is directly opposed to the productivity of the Cardinal offense, a unit that has crossed the goal line a measly five times. The Cardinals possess a putrid offensive line, one of the worst in the entire league, but Anderson has had little trouble putting together good games behind it. However, the limits of the Cardinal offense were on full display in week 7 against a good Oiler defense. The entire second half saw the Oilers crash through the offensive line of St Louis play after play. Anywhere from two to four offensive linemen were being charged through, flung and knocked down, and the overall speed of the Oiler drones negated the shiftiness of Anderson. What the Cardinals needed was a pressure valve release in the form of Jim Hart. But all Hart did was go 2/6 with 2 interceptions. This 1980 St Louis Cardinal team has several deficiencies: the aforementioned weak offensive line, lack of hitting power on defense, shallow all around depth. The main culprit, though, is that the Cardinals have no Hart.

No Movie (Yet)

In terms of the passing game, the Tecmo Legacy League 77 season has been one filled with broken records.  Earlier this season Bill Troup, of all QBs, surpassed the single game mark of 304 yards set by Dan Fouts by putting up an impressive 367 through the air.  A few weeks later Isaac Curtis clipped John McKay`s single game receiving record, and one week later Curtis broke his own mark.  There the single game receiving record sat, at 260 yards.

Along came Week 12, and a match up between the Giants and Cardinals.  In the first meeting the Giants defeated St. Louis 17-10 in a largely uneventful grind it out type game.  What a difference a second chance makes.

The Cardinals eventually outlasted the Giants, scoring a field goal with :09 left in overtime to capture a 24-21 win.  However, what happened in between the starting gun and that last notched field goal, was something special to behold.  Quarterback Jim Hart hurled the football 20 times in the game, completing nine of those for 335 yards.  On the other end was Mel Gray, the recipient of all 9 completions and all 335 yards.  What this meant was that Gray absolutely shattered the former top mark of 260 yards receiving in a game by over 70 yards.  SE-VEN-TY!  Gray`s performance was (more) than enough to earn him Week 12 offensive player of the week, and more importantly for Gray (or not) his performance helped secure the Cardinals first victory of the season.

  It appears the TLL is not the only realm in which Gray stirs up controversy, and excites on the field.  It is also the case that Gray does not discriminate as to which NFC East team he terrorizes, as a 1975 Fake NFL account tells.

St. Louis met the rival Washington Redskins in an encounter that would end up leaving one team shell-shocked and in disarray.  To offer a hint, the team left in shambles, fraught in the course of a maddening day, was the team without Mel Gray.  With the game in Washington`s grasp, leading 17-10, the Cardinals managed to move into scoring position, working feverishly against the waning clock.  From here Jim Hart threw incomplete on three consecutive downs, leaving St. Louis with a fourth down, one last shot to tie the game.  What ensued became one of the most controversial plays in Washington`s history, and a triumph for St. Louis.  On the fourth down play Hart connected with a leaping Mel Gray in the end zone.  Pat Fischer, a star cornerback, smacked into Gray as the wide receiver`s hands closed around the ball.  In the melee bodies were strewn across the end zone, and there lay the ball, in the aftermath, sitting silently and motionless on the turf.  The calm exemplified by the ball would not last.  The two officials closest to the play offered mixed verdicts- one declared the result incomplete, while the other a touchdown.    After the officials banded in a huddle (then threw some dice, flipped a coin, or perhaps consulted a pocketbook version of the I-Ching), they exited with a final declaration:  Touchdown St. Louis!  In a play with far less fame than the `Immaculate Reception`, but with a stunningly similar and contentious story arc (a last second throw for a TD, a collision, a bewildered officiating crew huddling after the event), undoubtedly Pat Fischer was this story`s Jack Tatum, and let us not forget, Fischer is also the George Atkinson.  To this day Fischer denies that Gray actually caught the ball prior to it being jarred loose. `The evidence is clear he didn’t catch it,` Fischer said. `Just as it hit his shoulder, I made contact.  I doubt if he would have ever caught it, but they said he had it that fraction in the end zone and called it a touchdown. Gray immediately knew he didn’t catch it because he put his hands on his helmet in frustration.`  Atkinson, if you recall, refuses to acknowledge the historical narrative that reveres, is mesmerized by the image of, and stands in awe of, the `Immaculate Reception`.  `We don`t call it the `Immaculate Reception`, we call it the `Immaculate DE-ception.`  Frenchie Fuqua has said of the `Immaculate Reception`, `That play.  If you`re a Steeler fan, you believe in it.  If you`re a cynic, like them damned Raiders, then you`ll never accept it.`  In the 1975 game between St. Louis and Washington, Jim Bakken would go on to kick the game winning field goal for the Cards.  It was a result that marked an irreconcilable tailspin for Washington, as the club missed the playoffs for the first time since George Allen began coaching the Redskins.  Meanwhile, St. Louis was able to capture the NFC East crown.

In the Tecmo Legacy League, the Cardinals are in no position to be catapulted into the postseason, but at least they have a luminous beacon in Mel Gray, acting as a guiding pathway for a Cardinal ship otherwise lost at sea, while simultaneously acting as a blinding light that can confound and send an opposing ship- a rival ship- aground.                             

 

 

Q: What's more demeaning - being on an exploitative reality television show or being a member of the 1981 St. Louis Cardinals?

A: Both of them are tremendously demeaning!

Take Ken Greene. Last week against the undefeated Detroit Lions, he made 7 tackles, intercepted two passes and brought them back 15 yards, and forced a comma. Who gives a fuck about the Oxford Comma, you ask? Ken Greene does, because he's done caring about football. Despite his heroics, his Cardinals lost to Detroit in overtime, 27-21.

Greene started at safety in the NFL for five seasons. Not bad, even if it was all for poor defenses (the late-70s and early-80s Cardinals and the 83-84 Chargers). He even got himself a coaching career when his playing days were over - he was an assistant coach at Vallivue High School in 1994, and then went on to be a general assistant/defensive backs/linebackers coach at Fresno State (1995-99), from where he became Purdue's defensive backs coach (2000-02), and he held the same job at Washington State from 2003-06. An impressive enough resume for a good player and a good coach.

And then he went on the Amazing Race.

This man went on national television and said that he was entering the Amazing Race to save his relationship with his wife, Tina, the woman whose picture appears in the teaser to this article (a hint: it didn't work; they've since divorced). She works as a CEO for a biotech/pharmeceutical company, said at the time that Ken is "fun and teaches me to stop and smell the roses. He's got such a positive attitude about life that you love being around him."

In Ken's words, "When you agree to do a show like that, you're exposing your personal life to the world [...] Once we were chosen, we were so eager to get started."

Ken Greene was eager to expose himself, and the St. Louis Cardinals, to the TLL in Week 7, and much like he would lose his wife years later, he lost the game. Still, his ridiculous performance (nowhere near as ridiculous as agreeing to appear on reality television) earns him this week's Defensive Player of the Week.