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Big Red Draft History: 1985 NFL Draft
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When Luis Sharpe signed a free-agent contract with the Memphis Showboats of the United States Football League two weeks before the 1985 NFL Draft, the Cardinals suddenly had a big hole to fill.
A first-round draft pick in 1982, Sharpe had started at left tackle all 41 games in his first three seasons with the Big Red, but now it looked like he had been lost to the upstart USFL. The Cardinals hoped to find his replacement in the Draft.
Trouble was, four of the best tackles were snatched up before it was the Cardinals’ turn to pick in the first round—Lomas Brown (Lions), Ken Ruettgers (Packers), Kevin Allen (Eagles) and Jim Lachey (Chargers)—so the team went to Plan B and selected Mississippi defensive end Freddie Joe Nunn with the 18th overall choice.
A few months earlier, Big Red coach Jim Hanifan and his staff had coached the North team in the Senior Bowl, and Nunn’s performance for the South squad had impressed Hanifan.
“He roared in on us all day long from defensive right end,” Hanifan recalled. “It’s going to be a pleasure having him on the same side of the fence. … He can create havoc for us as a pass rusher right away.”
To mitigate the loss of Sharpe, St. Louis picked Wisconsin’s Scott Bergold in the second round. Bergold had been a defensive tackle in college but Hanifan, who had coached Bergold in the Senior Bowl, said Bergold would be converted to offensive tackle in the NFL. Although that plan didn’t work out, Sharpe re-signed with the Cardinals before the 1985 season and played another 10 years with the team.
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Big Red Draft History: 1984 NFL Draft
The Big Red Zone continues its series looking back on each of the 28 St. Louis Cardinals drafts (1960-87). This installment focuses on the 1984 Draft, which was held May 1-2 in New York.
When the Cardinals selected University of Tennessee wide receiver Clyde Duncan with their first-round pick (17th overall) in the 1984 NFL Draft, no one was more surprised than Duncan himself.
“It was a really a shock. I had no idea I would go in the first round,” said Duncan, who did not make a significant impact as a receiver at Tennessee until his senior season, when he caught 33 passes for 640 yards and six touchdowns.
The Big Red chose Duncan even though they could have taken the more highly rated Louis Lipps, a wide receiver from Southern Mississippi.
In his first two seasons in the NFL—his only seasons—Duncan had a combined four receptions for 39 yards and one touchdown. In his first two seasons, Lipps caught 104 passes for 1,994 yards and 21 TDs for Pittsburgh.
There was only one problem with Duncan. He couldn’t catch the football.
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Big Red Draft History: 1983 NFL Draft
The Big Red Zone continues its series by looking back on each of the 28 St. Louis Cardinals drafts (1960-87). This installment focuses on the 1983 Draft, which was held April 26-27 in New York.
The Cardinals went into the 1983 NFL Draft with some uncertainty about their secondary.
Roger Wehrli had retired after the 1982 season, bringing to an end a 14-year Hall of Fame career. Carl Allen had bolted from the Cardinals and signed with the USFL. And Jeff Griffin was still recovering from a broken arm he suffered during the final game of the ’82 season, a 41-16 playoff loss to Green Bay.
Who was going to start at left cornerback opposite Wayne Smith?
In an effort to answer that question, the Big Red loaded up on defensive backs in the draft, targeting the cornerback position in the first, second, fourth and sixth rounds.
With their first-round pick (17th overall), the Cardinals took McNeese State’s Leonard Smith, who many scouts had rated as the second-best cornerback in the draft after Tim Lewis (picked 11th overall by Green Bay) despite having played at Division I-AA McNeese State in the Southland Conference.
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Big Red Draft History: 1982 NFL Draft
It’s rare when a football team finds two offensive tackles in the same draft who not only start immediately as rookies but become longtime pillars of the line.
That was the case in 1982, when the Cardinals drafted UCLA’s Luis Sharpe in the first round (16th overall) and East Carolina’s Tootie Robbins in the fourth round (90th).
The Big Red traded down five spots in Round 1 and made Sharpe their first offensive lineman taken in the first round in 20 years (Irv Goode, 1962). An All-American and a three-year starter in college, the 6-5, 275-pound Sharpe was voted UCLA’s most valuable player in 1981. Jim Hanifan, who had been an NFL offensive line coach before being named head coach of the Cardinals in 1980, recognized Sharpe’s potential from Day 1.
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Big Red Draft History: 1981 NFL Draft
The Big Red Zone continues its series by looking back on each of the 28 St. Louis Cardinals drafts (1960-87). This installment focuses on the 1981 Draft, which was held April 28-29 in New York.
Hugh Green or E.J. Junior? That was the question staring the Cardinals in the face as they debated who to select with the fifth overall pick in the 1981 draft.
Green, a 6-2, 225-pound defensive end from Pittsburgh, had been one of the best college players in 1980. A three-time All-American, he had won the Lombardi Trophy as the nation’s best lineman and had finished second in the Heisman Trophy balloting.
Junior, a 6-3, 238-pound end from Alabama who had played for legendary coach Bear Bryant on two national championship teams in 1978 and 1979, also had been a consensus All-American in 1980.
In the end, the deciding factor was size. And Junior was the choice.
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Big Red Draft History: 1980 NFL Draft
The Big Red Zone continues its series looking back on each of the 28 St. Louis Cardinals drafts (1960-87). This installment focuses on the 1980 Draft, which was held April 29-30 in New York.
Was that the sound of “Hail to the Victors” coming from the Cardinals’ draft room on April 29, 1980? It could have been the University of Michigan fight song, given that the Big Red took a pair of Michigan players with their first two selections in the NFL Draft.
With their first-round pick (sixth overall), they chose defensive end Curtis Greer, who had 48 tackles for 234 yards in losses during his college career. In the second round, St. Louis took tight end Doug Marsh, who caught 57 passes for 947 yards and 10 touchdowns for the Wolverines.
After the Cardinals recorded 28 sacks in 1979 (25th among the 28 NFL teams), their need for a pass rusher opposite Bob Pollard was obvious. And after struggling to find a dominant, pass-catching tight during the previous two seasons, Marsh seemed like he could fill the bill.
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Big Red Draft History: 1979 NFL Draft
With the NFL kicking off its three-day 2023 Draft, the Big Red Zone continues its series looking back on each of the 28 St. Louis Cardinals drafts (1960-87). This installment focuses on the 1979 Draft, which was held May 3-4 in New York.
The Cardinals struck gold—twice—in the 1979 Draft when they selected running back Ottis Anderson of Miami (Fla.) and defensive back Roy Green of Henderson State, who would become two of the most prodigiously productive offensive players in team history.
The team’s top priority was a running back who had the speed and skills to run outside. In 1978, their top three backs were Jim Otis, Wayne Morris and Steve Jones—all inside power runners who accounted for 1,687 of the team’s 1,954 rushing yards (86 percent). Coach Bud Wilkinson wanted someone with breakaway speed.
In the weeks leading up to the Draft, the Big Red brass debated who to target with the team’s first-round pick (eighth overall): Anderson, who rushed for 3,333 yards at Miami, or Charles Alexander, who ran for 4,035 yards at LSU. Their choice of Anderson proved to be the right one.
“We feel that he has the great moves that we’ve been hunting for,” Cardinals personnel director George Boone said. “We haven’t had those in quite a while.” At least since 1977, Terry Metcalf’s last season as a Cardinal.
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Big Red Draft History: 1978 NFL Draft
As we move closer to the 2023 NFL Draft (Thursday-Saturday), The Big Red Zone is looking back on each of the 28 St. Louis Cardinals drafts (1960-87). This installment focuses on the 1978 Draft, which was held May 2-3 in New York.
Of the 139 kicking specialists drafted in the NFL before 1978, only two—placekicker Charlie Gogolak (1966) and punter Ray Guy (1973)—were selected in the first round. On May 2, 1978, the Cardinals increased that number to three when they took Arkansas dual kicker Steve Little with the 15th overall choice.
Before you go saying, Just another dumb move by George Boone, consider that all of the Cardinals’ hierarchy was on board with the pick.
“It was a unanimous decision,” first-year head coach Bud Wilkinson told reporters, using an analytical explanation for defending the pick.
Wilkinson pointed out that in 1977, the Big Red’s average field position for an offensive position was their 32-yard line, and that they netted only a little more than 31 yards in net punting. (Actually, the Cardinals’ net punting average had been 32.8 yards—10th best in the NFL and slightly better than the league’s 31.8 average—but let’s not quibble).
“That’s a loss in field position that’s difficult to make up. And those are figures that can be improved,” Wilkinson said, tossing out phrases such as position football and cumulative yardage.
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Big Red Draft History: 1977 NFL Draft
Do As we move closer to the 2023 NFL Draft (April 27-29), The Big Red Zone is looking back on each of the 28 St. Louis Cardinals drafts (1960-87). This installment focuses on the 1977 Draft, which was held May 3-4 in New York.
In March 1977, the Cardinals brought in Steve Pisarkiewicz for a pre-draft visit at Busch Stadium. The former University of Missouri quarterback spent the day being quizzed about defensive coverages, getting a physical evaluation, and throwing passes on the field. The visit wrapped up with a dinner at the stadium club, where Cardinals Director of Operations Joe Sullivan and head coach Don Coryell dined with Zark, his mom, and his McCluer High football coach.
“It was a great day, actually,” Zark recalls in an April 2023 interview with the Big Red Zone. At least until the end.
During dinner, Pisarkiewicz recalls, “Coryell leaned over to me—I’ll never forget—and said, ‘Hey, Steve, I want to thank you for coming in and spending the day with us. I know being from St. Louis you’re probably a longtime Cardinals fan. I just want to wish you luck in your career. We’re not going to go after a quarterback this year, but we wanted to get some information on you and we’re glad you came in. All the best to you.’”
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