Extreme makeover: Dennis Green has the ultimate challenge--to turn the Cardinals into something that's a little easier on the eyes--but he just might succeed.

Publication: Football Digest

Publication Date: 01-OCT-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Century Publishing

FOR YEARS, THE ARIZONA CARDinals have been the NFUs ugliest duckling, a bumbling franchise whose frequent pratfalls have inspired scorn, bad jokes, and, mostly, indifference.

Suddenly, though, the ugly duckling is beginning to turn heads. And while the Cards' extreme makeover is far from complete, they now seem within a nip here and a tuck there--and there and there--of emerging at last as a playoff contending swan.

They might be there already. The Cardinals, despite coming off a typically dismal 6-10 record, have become a trendy pick to win the NFC West after an offseason that ranks among the most productive in the league. For the first time in years, there is optimism surrounding a team that finally seems to be on the way up.

"I can tell there is about to be a change," says cornerback Eric Green, Arizona's third-round draft choice this year. "People can talk about Arizona's past of not winning, but in coming here you'd never know that, because that isn't the mindset."

The transformation began on January 7, 2004, when Dennis Green was named the 33rd coach of the Cardinals, a team buried under decades of futility. In the past 10 seasons, no team has lost more games than Arizona, which is 55-105 in that span. In fact, the Cards' 316 defeats since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger are the most in the league. And they haven't won a championship since 1947, the league's longest such drought.

But the hiring of Green,...

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