Ask a younger football fan about the St. Louis Cardinals and they’ll probably look at you sideways. They'll think you’re confused. "You mean the baseball team?" they'll ask, probably while checking their phone. But for a certain generation of fans in the Midwest, St Louis Cardinals football wasn't just a quirk of history—it was a twenty-eight-year rollercoaster of near-misses, legendary talent, and a heartbreaking departure that still stings if you talk to the right people in a South City dive bar.
They were the Big Red. Or the Gridbirds.
It’s honestly wild to think that from 1960 to 1987, the Gateway City had two pro teams with the exact same name. Imagine the logistical nightmare. The confusion at the ticket office. But the football Cardinals had a soul all their own, defined by names like Dan Dierdorf, Jim Hart, and the electric Terry Metcalf. They weren't just a placeholder between the Rams and the Battlehawks; they were a team that defined 1970s offensive innovation before hitting a wall of ownership disputes and stadium politics that eventually pushed them to the desert of Arizona.
The Chicago Roots and the 1960 Move
The team didn't just sprout up in Missouri. They actually started as the Morgan Athletic Club in Chicago back in 1898. That makes them one of the oldest professional football teams in existence, even older than the NFL itself. They became the Chicago Cardinals, sharing a city with the Bears, which... as you can imagine, didn't go great for the bottom line. By the late fifties, the Bidwill family realized they couldn't compete with the Halas dynasty in the Windy City.
St. Louis was the landing spot.
In 1960, the NFL gave the green light, and the St Louis Cardinals football era officially kicked off at the old Sportsman's Park. It was a weird transition. They were essentially the younger sibling to the baseball Cardinals, who had already been there for decades and had a cabinet full of World Series trophies. The football team had to fight for every bit of relevance. They moved into Busch Memorial Stadium (Busch II) in 1966, sharing the turf with the baseball guys, which led to those iconic images of dirt infields in the middle of a football gridiron.
The Cardiac Cards Era
If you want to talk about the peak of this franchise, you have to talk about 1974 to 1976. Don Coryell was the coach. This is the guy who basically invented the modern passing game—the "Air Coryell" system that would later make the San Diego Chargers famous. But it started in St. Louis.
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They were nicknamed the "Cardiac Cards" because they had this insane habit of winning games in the final seconds. You'd be sitting there, heart in your throat, watching Jim Hart heave a ball toward Mel Gray. Hart wasn't the most mobile guy, but he had a cannon and a lot of guts. During those three years, they went 10-4, 11-3, and 10-4. They won the NFC East back-to-back in '74 and '75.
Think about that for a second.
The NFC East. They were rivals with the Cowboys, the Redskins, and the Giants. The heat in those games was real. Fans would pack Busch Stadium, and the noise—despite the stadium's circular, multi-purpose design—was deafening. But here is the kicker: despite all that regular-season success, they never won a playoff game during that stretch. Not one. They ran into the Los Angeles Rams and the Minnesota Vikings, and the magic just... evaporated. It’s one of those "what if" scenarios that haunts St. Louis sports history. What if Coryell had stayed? What if they’d caught a break in the divisional round?
Hall of Fame Grit on the Line
While the offense got the headlines, the heart of the team was the offensive line. Dan Dierdorf. If you only know him as a broadcaster, you’re missing out on one of the most dominant tackles to ever play the game. Between 1976 and 1977, Dierdorf went two consecutive seasons without allowing a single sack.
Two. Years.
He was a mountain of a man who embodied the St. Louis work ethic. He played alongside guys like Conrad Dobler, who was famously labeled the "dirtiest player in the NFL" by Sports Illustrated. Dobler didn't mind. He embraced it. He'd bite, kick, and punch—basically whatever it took to protect Jim Hart. It gave the team a nasty edge that the city loved. They weren't the "America's Team" Cowboys; they were the guys who would punch you in the mouth and then beat you on a 40-yard post route.
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The Slow Slide and the Bill Bidwill Conflict
By the 1980s, the wheels started coming off. The relationship between owner Bill Bidwill and the city of St. Louis turned sour. Bidwill wanted a football-only stadium. He was tired of playing in a circular "cookie-cutter" stadium where the seats were too far from the action and the baseball team got priority on scheduling and revenue.
The city, meanwhile, wasn't exactly jumping to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars.
The performance on the field reflected the chaos in the front office. After Coryell left, the team cycled through coaches. Jim Hanifan had some decent years, and they made the playoffs in the strike-shortened 1982 season, but the consistency was gone. By 1986, the rumors of relocation were a dull roar. Jacksonville, Phoenix, and even Memphis were mentioned as potential landing spots.
Fans felt betrayed. Attendance started to dip, not because people didn't love the players, but because they didn't want to give their money to an owner who already had one foot out the door. It was a messy, protracted divorce.
1987: The Final Stand
The 1987 season was a strange, hollow experience. It was the year of the player strike, so fans had to watch replacement players for a few weeks—often referred to as the "St. Louis Replacement Cardinals." The real players eventually came back, but the vibe was dead.
The final home game took place on December 13, 1987, against the New York Giants. Only about 29,000 people showed up in a stadium that held over 50,000. It wasn't a grand send-off. It was a quiet, cold afternoon. They lost 27-7. A few weeks later, the move to Phoenix was official. Just like that, twenty-eight years of history were packed into moving vans.
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Why the Legacy Still Matters
You can't understand St. Louis sports without acknowledging the scar left by the football Cardinals. It’s why the city was so guarded when the Rams arrived in 1995. It’s why there’s still a deep-seated distrust of the NFL league office in the 314 area code.
But the memories of the Big Red remain vibrant for those who were there. They remember Jackie Smith—one of the greatest tight ends ever—sprinting down the seam. They remember Roger Wehrli, the shutdown corner who Roger Staubach once called the best he ever played against. They remember the white jerseys with the bold red numerals and the classic cardinal bird on the helmet.
What People Get Wrong About the Move
There’s a common narrative that St. Louis isn't a "football town." That's total nonsense. St. Louis supported the Cardinals through decades of mediocre ownership. The problem was never the fans; it was the infrastructure and a fundamental mismatch between a family-owned team and a city that was transitioning through economic shifts. When the team moved to Arizona, they didn't magically become a powerhouse—it took them decades to find their footing there, proving that the issues in St. Louis weren't just about the zip code.
Real Insights for Fans and Historians
If you're looking to connect with the history of St Louis Cardinals football, don't just look at the win-loss columns. Look at the impact they had on the community. Here is how you can actually engage with this "lost" era of sports:
- Visit the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame: Located within the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, you can find specific exhibits dedicated to the Big Red era, including Dan Dierdorf’s gear and memorabilia from the 1970s glory days.
- Track Down "The Big Red Line": There are several fan-run archives and Facebook groups (like "The Big Red Historical Society") that have digitized old game programs and local radio broadcasts that you can't find on YouTube.
- Check the Pro Football Hall of Fame: St. Louis produced a surprising number of HOFers during that window. Study the careers of Jackie Smith, Dan Dierdorf, and Roger Wehrli to see how the game was played before the modern era of player safety and complex blitz packages.
- Understand the Stadium Context: If you ever visit the site of the former Busch Stadium II (now part of the Ballpark Village area), try to visualize the configuration. The football field ran from what is now basically center field toward home plate. It was a logistical nightmare that forced the NFL to change how they viewed stadium deals.
The St Louis Cardinals football team didn't just disappear; they evolved into a different beast in a different state. But the 28 years they spent in Missouri remain a foundational chapter of the NFL's growth during the television era. They were a team of characters, a team of innovators, and ultimately, a team that deserved a better ending than a quiet exit on a cold December day.