Dave McGinnis, a former Arizona Cardinals head coach and longtime Tennessee Titans assistant, died Monday at age 74, the Titans said in a news release.
The team said McGinnis had been hospitalized for an illness in early March and died at Ascension St. Thomas Midtown Hospital with his family at his side. “My heart aches with the loss of Coach Mac, who was so much more than a coach and broadcaster – he was family,” Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk said in the release.
Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill also released a statement, saying, “As Dave often said, he was a ‘ball coach’ through and through, and no one ever filled that role with more passion, enthusiasm and charisma. Coach Mac truly loved the game and everything – and everyone – associated with it, especially his players. He was one of a kind and will be greatly missed.”
McGinnis served as the Cardinals’ defensive coordinator in 1996, became interim head coach during the 2000 season and was retained as head coach from 2001-03. Team records show he was 17-40 in 57 games as the Cardinals’ head coach and was fired after a 4-12 season in 2003.
His coaching career began in 1973 as an assistant at TCU and included stops at Indiana State, Missouri and Kansas State before he entered the NFL with the Chicago Bears in 1986. He was the Bears’ linebackers coach from 1986-95, later coached with the St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams and left coaching after the 2016 season, the Titans’ release said. McGinnis returned to Nashville in 2017 as a color announcer for Titans Radio.
“I love Dave McGinnis, and I don’t know that I’ve met anybody who was created for football, and a football life, more than Coach Mac,” Titans president and CEO Burke Nihill said in the release. “He just loved the game … He was such a special guy.”
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
