Larry Fitzgerald may be the best Arizona Cardinals player ever, but who else should join him on the Arizona Cardinals Mount Rushmore?
The Arizona Cardinals franchise dates back to the first year of the NFL, as the Chicago Cardinals. They shared the Windy City with the Bears through the 1959 season, then they were the St. Louis Cardinals from 1960-1987.
The Cardinals moved to Arizona for the 1988 season, as the Phoenix Cardinals before becoming the Arizona Cardinals in 1994.
Between the 1948 and 2008 seasons, the Cardinals won one playoff game. They didn’t make the playoffs a lot, with appearances in 1974, 1975, 1982 and 1998 over that span, which only points to being a patently unsuccessful franchise.
The stretch under head coaches Ken Whisenhunt and Bruce Arians from 2008-2015 was different with four playoff appearances and two trips to the NFC Championship Game. But a reset came when Arians left after the 2017 season, with two head coaches (Steve Wilks and Kliff Kingsbury) and an 8-23-1 record over the last two seasons.
The future looks bright in Arizona now though, with may lead to some players becoming all-time greats for the franchise. But right now, here is the all-time Mount Rushmore for the Arizona Cardinals.
Honorable Mention: Dan Dierdorf, Patrick Peterson Anquan Boldin and Larry Centers
4. Aeneas Williams
A third-round pick out of Southern in 1991, Williams spent the first 10 seasons of his Hall of Fame career with the Cardinals. He earned six of his eight career Pro Bowl nods and two of three All-Pro nods in a Cardinals’ uniform. He is second in franchise history in interceptions with 46, and he returned six of those for touchdowns.
Williams never missed a game when he played for the Cardinals, starting all but one (during his rookie season) of those 160 games. That durability was not because he avoided contact either, as he had at least 40 solo tackles every season from 1994-2000 with at least 52 total tackles in the later six of those seasons.
In Pro Football Reference’s AV (Approximate Value) metric, Williams is fifth in Cardinals’ franchise history (101). He was always underrated and underappreciated since he was on just one playoff team in Arizona. But Williams gets the first bust on the Cardinals’ Mount Rushmore.
3. Ottis “O.J.” Anderson
In the second act of his career Anderson was NFL Comeback Player of the Year in 1989 and the MVP of Super Bowl XXV the following season, as the New York Giants controlled the clock and kept a prolific Buffalo Bills’ offense off the field behind his 21 carries for 102 yards. But he was drafted eighth overall by the Cardinals in 1979 and won Rookie of the Year that year with 1,605 yards (third in the league) and eight touchdowns.
In five of his first six NFL seasons, of the eight he spent as a St. Louis Cardinal, Anderson cleared 1,100 yards on the ground with at least 286 carries (over 300 each of his first three seasons). He’s not a Hall of Famer, but with career rushing yardage (10,273) currently still top-30 all-time and career rushing touchdowns in the top-20 ever (81; 19th) Anderson is firmly in the “Hall of Very Good.”
Anderson is the all-time leading rusher in Cardinals’ history, with 7,999 yards, and he is also the franchise leader in rushing scores with 46. Among the NFL’s best running backs of the early to mid-80’s he is starkly overlooked, surely due to how bad the Cardinals were. But his face is firmly carved on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore.
2. Larry Wilson
Wilson spent his entire career with the St. Louis Cardinals (1960-1972), earning eight Pro Bowl nods and five All-Pro selections over those 13 seasons. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1978. He would serve as Director of Pro Personnel for the Cardinals from 1980-1987, then vice president and general manager from 1988-1993 and finally a vice president from 1994-2002.
Based on Pro Football Reference’s Approximate Value, Wilson is the top defensive player in Cardinals’ franchise history (115). He is still the franchise leader in interceptions with 52, and starting with 1966, when he led the league with 10 interceptions, he earned both a Pro Bowl selection and an All-Pro nod in five straight seasons.
Wilson was on the NFL’s All-Decade Teams for the 1960s and 1970s, and he more recently was named to the league’s 75th and 100th-anniversary teams in 1994 and 2019. Yet his name hardly rolls off the tongue when considering all-time great players of his era, or all-time great defensive backs in NFL history. At least in the small corner of Cardinals’ franchise history, Wilson’s name (and bust) is now getting the worthy extra light on a Mount Rushmore.
1. Larry Fitzgerald
Any year now could be the last of Fitzgerald’s career but he’s returning for a 17th season this year. The former No. 3 pick out of Pitt ranks second all-time in catches (1,378), second all-time in receiving yards (17,083) and sixth all-time in receiving touchdowns (120). Fitzgerald will get into the Hall of Fame as soon as he’s eligible.
He’s not catching Jerry Rice in either of the first two categories unless he plays at least another season beyond 2020. He’s eight touchdowns shy of tying Marvin Harrison for fifth all-time in that category, but based on recent history he may have to play two more seasons to get there.
Fitzgerald’s greatest value now may be as a veteran leader, and he seems to relish that role as the Cardinals cross into a new era under Kliff Kingsbury. But he’s still pretty productive after catching 75 passes last year, and he has only missed six games in his entire career to this point.
Had he been drafted by another team but still been as productive as he has has been, Fitzgerald would be No. 1 on the Mount Rushmore for a lot of NFL franchises. For the Cardinals, as he plays out his career having only played in their uniform, he’s a very easy choice to be No. 1.