Opinion: Before the Super Bowl, Tampa Bay Bucs were these laughingstock Yucs
Doug FernandesHis team provided enough unintentional laughs on the field. Plus, his personality was more straight man than stand-up comic. But for one mundane press conference back in 1991, Richard Williamson managed to inject a bit of impromptu humor into the reading of an injury report.
Not planned, but so typically Tampa Bay Buccaneer. Sitting in the media trailer outside One Buc Place before a handful of reporters, the Bucs head coach read off the list of player injuries when he got to linebacker Kevin Murphy.
"Kevin Murphy, MRI," Williamson said before pausing. "I hope I'm spelling that right." Unfortunately for Williamson, his team couldn't spell "WIN," and after finishing 3-13, he was fired after one season on the job.
They were the Bucs, the Yucs, the NFL's longest running joke without a punch line, and a team bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the one which will take the Raymond James Stadium field on Sunday for Super Bowl 55.
More:From home school to handshakes, Super Bowl 55 families got creative to ward off COVID-19
And for eight years, from 1991 through 1998, I had a front-row seat to all the creamsicle lunacy as the team's beat writer for the Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune, "beat" being the appropriate word. Not until my seventh year covering the team — and Tony Dungy's second as head coach — did I see a season with more wins than losses.
The team's record over those eight campaigns? A sparkling 50-78. After owner Hugh Culverhouse fired Williamson following the '91 season, he believed he had bagged former New York Giants head coach Bill Parcells to replace him. Shortly after Christmas, the Bucs called a press conference, ostensibly to announce Parcells as head coach.
The scene, surreal as possible, was impossible to forget. Culverhouse walked out before a room of media people who expected Parcells to be right behind his new boss. He wasn't. At the 11th hour, Parcells had gotten cold feet.
"We now feel as though we were jilted at the altar," Culverhouse said. A list of four candidates was quickly put together. Culverhouse could have had Mike Holmgren, then an assistant with the 49ers. Instead, he bought the sales pitch of Sam Wyche, fired by the Bengals after a 3-13 season.
It was a mistake by both parties. Wyche should have taken a year off, and Culverhouse should have taken Holmgren, who would later coach the Green Bay Packers to a Super Bowl title. Wyche arrived in Tampa, his introductory press conference outside old Tampa Stadium on the back of a long flatbed truck.
Again, appropriate, for in Wyche's four years in Tampa, his Bucs fell flat, finishing a combined 23-41. What Tampa Bay didn't provide in victories, Wyche provided with slap-your-forehead moments.
After wide receiver Reidel Anthony dropped a touchdown pass against the Packers, the former Florida star was to be paid the following Tuesday. Wyche handed out the checks to his players, and when he presented Anthony his, said, "Here, don't drop it."
Noting his team was performing poorly in the second halves of games, Wyche would stop practice in the middle and have his players return to their dressing room for 15 minutes to simulate halftime. It didn't work. Little Wyche tried — and he tried everything — work.
Before a road game at Seattle, the Bucs' PR person, who had a fear of flying, poked his head into the cockpit of the team plane and asked the pilot if he expected any turbulence during the cross-country flight. When the pilot said he did, that was enough for the PR guy to skip the flight and the game.
The Bucs lost to the Seahawks, a pass interference penalty on a Hail Mary from Trent Dilfer to wide receiver Horace Copeland on the game's final play not called by the officials. Without a PR person to direct the media to the press conference, we all missed Wyche giving perhaps the shortest post-game talk in NFL history, an estimated 12 seconds.
But we were there in 1995, outside the Bucs' locker room at One Buc, when an embattled Wyche, who was thought to be on the verge of getting fired, used his players in another bizarre moment from Buc lore. Wyche had Jimmy Johnson, then in between head coaching jobs with the Cowboys and Dolphins, walk into the locker room wearing a Buc jacket and introduce himself as the team's new head coach with the words, "There's going to be some changes around here."
Several months later, a big change. Wyche was fired and Tony Dungy brought aboard. The former defensive assistant benefitted from talent Wyche helped draft, such as Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks and John Lynch.
Dungy righted the franchise, getting the Bucs to an NFC Championship Game. But it was Jon Gruden who guided the team to its Super Bowl title, without giving much thought to the franchise's future.
Tampa Bay fired Gruden after the 2008 season, starting a period which would see four Buc head coaches hired and fired over the next 10 years. Five-and-11 in 2018 under Dirk Koetter became 7-9 in 2019 under Bruce Arians.
What happened next is why the Bucs are playing the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. Jameis Winston and his 88 career interceptions left. Tom Brady and his six Super Bowl titles arrived.
No one laughed at the Bucs this year. One more victory, they get to laugh. Long, loud and last.
.