A crazy story about how the Cardinals almost landed Steve Young

The history of the Arizona Cardinals is littered with what-if scenarios, including the time they almost acquired Steve Young.

As the league’s oldest team, the Chicago/St.Louis/Arizona Cardinals have the deepest amount of history to sort through. The Cardinals have been around since 1898, yet their history doesn’t get much attention as they haven’t won a championship since 1947.

There are bound to be some misses when you’ve been around for 124 seasons. Unfortunately, the Cardinals have had their fair share of those, particularly when it comes to the quarterback position. You’re probably wondering why the article is about Steve Young, but Joe Namath is at the top of this page.

Namath was drafted by the Cardinals in 1965, but he never ended up playing for the franchise for a number of reasons. What ended up happening with Namath is comparable to what happened in the offseason of 1987 with Young.

Young had spent the 1985 and 1986 seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their glorious creamsicle-orange uniforms. His performance didn’t match the beauty of their uniforms, as he led the team to a 3-16 record in his two years with the franchise.

These struggles were just some of the many difficulties Tampa Bay faced when the late Hugh Culverhouse owned the team.

Culverhouse was known to be cheap and a penny pincher that even his own children knew about it, and they weren’t afraid to contribute to a book about his “Eugene Krabs” set of ways.

So how did the then-St. Louis Cardinals have Steve Young for a moment, but then they didn’t? Let’s jump in the time machine and head back to the 1987 offseason and find out why.