TAMPA, Fla. — The most visible Cardinal has been dead nearly five years. Pat Tillman, the football player turned fallen soldier, is here, there and everywhere Arizona plays, the 2008 team embodying his selflessness and success against great odds.
Until this season, Tillman was the lone blossom on Arizona’s blighted NFL franchise, filling the Phoenix community’s collective heart with pride.
His No. 40 replica jersey — the top seller on the team Web site — hangs off the shoulders of grandmothers and bikers and businessmen who form a human ring of honor in the stands. Tillman is idolized by people who never saw him play a down. Journalists here are sizing him for a Super Bowl ring.
Soldiers will watch the Cardinals play the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday in Super Bowl XLIII from a U.S.O. center in Afghanistan that bears Tillman’s name and was built with money donated by the N.F.L. in his memory.
“It’s great,” said the former quarterback Jake Plummer, who was Tillman’s college and Cardinals teammate and a close friend. “But in the grand scheme of things, it all kind of stinks because he’s not around.”
Tillman was an undersized, overachieving safety who gave up his N.F.L. career eight months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to become an Army Ranger. He served first in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, where he was killed in combat in April 2004. He was 27. It took multiple investigations and prodding by the family to reveal how he had been killed by fire from his fellow soldiers, not from the enemy.
Two players on the National Football Conference championship Cardinals squad were on the team in Tillman’s final season: the man who replaced him in the starting lineup, Adrian Wilson, and the long snapper, Nathan Hodel.
Wilson, the hardest-hitting Cardinal, said Tillman was a huge help to him when he arrived in Arizona in 2001 as a rookie out of North Carolina State. “Pat knew I was going to be the guy that was going to be taking over his spot,” Wilson said. “He didn’t have any problems with it. He showed me the right way to do things.”
He added, “Not only the players, but I think the fans and people of Arizona really look back and wonder what this whole city would have been like if Pat was still here.”
Wilson was named this season to his second Pro Bowl, an honor that eluded Tillman in his four years in the N.F.L. A three-year starter, Tillman had his best season in 2000, when he set the team record for tackles with 224.
“Compared to what he did on the football field, and he was a great football player, it paled in comparison to what kind of person he was,” said Hodel, who arrived in Arizona midway through the 2001 season, after being released from the Carolina Panthers’ practice squad.
“Jake Plummer and Pat Tillman were the first players to shake my hand and introduce themselves,” Hodel said. “I wouldn’t say I knew Pat well, but I had lunch with him a couple of times. Just being around him made you want to be a better person.”
Hodel remembered when Tillman badly sprained his right ankle and was told by the team doctors not to practice. “You couldn’t keep him off the field,” Hodel said Thursday. “While the practice was going on, he ran around the entire field the entire time. That’s the grit and the passion and the tenacity about the gentleman.”
It was that grit and passion and tenacity that won Tillman a large following in the Phoenix area as a collegian. Originally from Northern California, he played linebacker at Arizona State, and was named the Pacific-10 Conference defensive player of the year in 1997.
“Before Pat was an Arizona Cardinal, he was a legend at Arizona State,” said Dave McGinnis, who was the Cardinals’ defensive coordinator and head coach in the years Tillman played there. “Something in him appealed to everybody. He had a huge following in the Valley before we ever drafted him.”
In 1998 Tillman was selected in the seventh round, at No. 226 over all, by the Cardinals, who played their home games then at Sun Devil Stadium. With Tillman a rookie, Arizona recorded its first winning season since 1984 and advanced to the postseason. The Cardinals upset Dallas in the first round before losing at Minnesota in a divisional playoff game. It was the franchise’s last playoff appearance until this season.
“We had a moment we hoped to build on; it didn’t happen,” said Plummer, who threw for nearly 3,800 yards in 1998. “But that season played a part in getting the stadium vote passed, and building the stadium played a part in the success the team is enjoying this year. So it’s neat to see.”
Retired and living in Idaho with his wife, Plummer hasn’t seen many Cardinals games. He was happy to hear that on game days, Tillman’s replica jerseys appear like mushrooms after a rain. The No. 40 sells better on the team Web site than the replica jerseys of quarterback Kurt Warner and receiver Larry Fitzgerald.
“That’s pretty awesome,” said Plummer, who was drafted by Arizona in the second round in 1997 and played there six seasons. “I’m going to don my 40 jersey this weekend myself and think about Pat. He always had such passion for football and for life. His passion for the game was infectious.”
Plummer added: “I was said to be the No. 1 face of the team, but I would tell Pat: ‘Are you kidding me? The community loves one man and that’s you.’ He would fall on the top of the pile on a special teams tackle, and the announcer would say, ‘Pat Tillman in on the tackle’ and the crowd would go wild.”
After Tillman decided to leave football for the military, he declined all news media interviews. The fame he tried to avoid while he was alive has found him in death. “It’s ironic that he’s become such a huge icon, a hero and a legend,” Plummer said. “It’s kind of funny that he’s become famous, because he didn’t want the attention.”
Tillman was posthumously promoted to corporal and was awarded the Silver Star for valor. But the circumstances surrounding his death were obscured by confusion and controversy. The military initially portrayed it as an act of heroism amid enemy fire. The investigations eventually revealed otherwise.
In April 2007, Tillman’s mother, Mary, and his brother Kevin, who joined the Army with him, testified before Congress at a hearing to examine whether officials had twisted the truth for wartime public relations purposes. Mostly, however, they have avoided the spotlight.
Attempts to interview family members through the Pat Tillman Foundation were not successful. Tillman’s widow, Marie, is expected to be at the game as a guest of the team.
Some reporters this week have suggested that if the Cardinals upset the Steelers, a Super Bowl ring should be presented to the family.
“I don’t think Pat would want a ring,” Plummer said, “unless he made some tackles and played in the Super Bowl.”
If Tillman were alive, Plummer said, he would be cheering wildly for this Arizona team, which was called the worst in playoff history at the start of the postseason.
“Of course,” he said, “Pat would have a kinship to an underdog like the Cardinals.”