A Legend in Purple and Gold

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

It’s been a really difficult year to be a Minnesota sports fan. Oh sure it’s always difficult to be a Minnesota sports fan, but this year is different.

Flip Saunders is gone. Prince too. And now Denny Green.

I was lucky growing up in Fargo, North Dakota in the ‘90s. I inherited a childhood filled with Kirby Puckett and Kevin Garnett and Cris Carter. And though I didn’t know to appreciate it at the time, I got a decade or more with Minnesota coaches Dennis Green, Flip Saunders, and Tom Kelly, three genuinely good, beloved men that left a legacy both on and off the field.

I was a spoiled Vikings fan in the ‘90s. We all were, really.

Ugh, why do we never have a good defense to go with our awesome offense? Ugh, always stuck around 9–7. Ugh, why can we never win the big one?

“Always winter, but never Christmas.”

It took a decade of floundering and top-10 draft picks and booze cruises and Mike Tice and Brad Childress to finally appreciate what we had in Denny.

The Vikings averaged 10.7 wins a season from 1992 to 2000 without a single season below .500 ball. They made the playoffs in 8 of those 9 years and finished with at least one playoff win in each of the last four years. Minnesota had the 5th most wins of any NFL team in the ‘90s and the 4th most playoff appearances, behind only powerhouses San Francisco, Dallas, and Buffalo.

So why did it always feel like we were all so disappointed in Denny?

Dennis Green had a difficult childhood, tragically losing each of his parents separately by age 13. He grew up with his older brother in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a football hotbed, and eventually went on to star at running back for the University of Iowa.

In 1981 Green was hired as head football coach at Northwestern University, becoming just the 2nd African-American head coach in Division 1 history. It was not the last time he would be a pioneer for African Americans in the world of sports.

In his second season, Green led the Wildcats to a 3–8 record and was named Big Ten coach of the year. If that seems odd, note that Northwestern had won just 1 of its previous 43 games. Green coached five years at Northwestern and three at Stanford, compiling a record of 26–63 as a college head coach with one solitary winning season in 1991.

Imagine the shock it must have been when Dennis Green took his 0.292 career winning percentage as a head coach to the NFL the following season. The Vikings had had only four coaches over their 31-year franchise history and were struggling to recover from the disastrous Herschel Walker trade, and now they were giving the keys to the kingdom to a relative unknown.

To a black man, in Minnesota, in 1992.

Dennis Green was the 2nd African-American head coach in the modern NFL.

Art Shell and Dennis Green. In 30 years, that was it.

Green had served on staff with the great Bill Walsh, first as an offensive coordinator at Stanford and later as the receivers coach in San Francisco. Walsh is rightfully recognized as having a prominent role giving coaching opportunities to minorities, and surely it was Green’s experience with Walsh that led to his opportunity in Minnesota. He would pave the way for many other black men to follow in his footsteps.

As of 2016, fourteen African-American men have been hired as head coach in the modern NFL. Eight of those fourteen — over half of them— fall under the Dennis Green coaching tree. That list includes Super Bowl winners Tony Dungy and Mike Tomlin, Lovie Smith, Herm Edwards, Marvin Lewis, and others. Green’s tree also includes Super Bowl winner Brian Billick, on staff the same time as Dungy, one of the great all-time coaching trios.

Rest assured that coaching tree will only continue to grow in his passing.

The Vikings went 97–62 under Denny Green. Those 97 wins over his decade with the team are more than Vince Lombardi and Bill Walsh had in their entire NFL careers. Green’s 0.610 win percentage with Minnesota would’ve placed him right in the middle of Vikings great Bud Grant, Joe Gibbs, Bill Walsh, and Tom Landry in the all-time coaching ranks.

During that decade, Green coached the Vikings to the playoffs 8 times —led incredibly by 7 different quarterbacks. That list included past-their-primes Warren Moon, Randall Cunningham, and Jim McMahon, career journeymen Jeff George, Brad Johnson, and Sean Salisbury, and tiny-handed Daunte Culpepper.

It didn’t matter that the Vikings never had a franchise QB. Denny and his West Coast Offense were the franchise QB. The name changed almost yearly, but the results stayed the same. The Vikings had a top-5 scoring offense in five of Green’s ten years with the team.

Green coached a few other players you may have heard of. He was the offensive coordinator for Stanford and helped to develop John Elway, one of the greatest quarterbacks ever. Later Green tutored a young receiver for the 49ers, taking him from 49 receptions and 3 TDs before Green arrived to 85 and 15 the following season, the breakout beginning of the career of perhaps the greatest football player of all time, Jerry Rice.

Green was a mentor and a father figure to many young men like Robert Smith, Randy Moss, Cris Carter, and Larry Fitzgerald. He gave them an opportunity that others didn’t, much like Bill Walsh had once done for him.

Green’s crowning coaching achievement came in 1998 when he coached the Vikings to a 15–1 record and the best offense in NFL history.

It was the greatest sports season of my life.

And yet it’s mostly remembered for Gary Anderson and for missing the Super Bowl and for coming up short again. Another Minnesota sports moment.

It was easy to take a shot at Denny Green as a Minnesota fan. It’s always easiest to blame the coach. The Vikings were always good — but never good enough. We never knew what we had until we didn’t have it anymore.

Denny Green was the perfect coach for the Vikings. And it turns out the Vikings were perfect for him — he went just 42–95 combined at Arizona, Stanford, and Northwestern.

Green was never as good as when he was in Minnesota, and in 33 years as a Minnesota fan, my Vikings have never been as good as when we had Green.

The 2000 Vikings season ended with a devastating 41–0 drubbing in New York in the NFC title game, one of the worst sports moments of my life. That summer tragedy struck in Minnesota when offensive lineman Korey Stringer died suddenly of heat stroke during training camp.

The team, and Dennis Green, never recovered. The Vikings lost 6 of their last 7 that year and bought out Green, ending a decade together. Green wasn’t the only Viking to leave that year. Cris Carter, Robert Griffith, Ed McDaniel, and Orlando Thomas also said goodbye.

In the decade after Denny, Minnesota averaged just 7.7 wins a season. Freed from Green’s boring 9 and 10 win seasons, the Vikings have had back-to-back winning seasons just once in 15 years with just two playoff wins.

Denny Green always won, won a lot, but it was never quite good enough.

Green was a winner, both on and off the field. He led the team well, and he mentored young men. He paved the way for many African Americans to find success in the coaching world, on the field, and in life.

He is who we thought he was.

And we gave him the hook.