Speaker 1: Hi, get everybody. I'm Dan Horde and thanks for downloading
Speaker 1: the Bengals Booth podcast. I will remember you. Addition, as
Speaker 1: we reflect on the passing of one of the greatest
Speaker 1: coaches in Bengals history and one of the most colorful
Speaker 1: characters in NFL history, Sam White, we'll listen back to
Speaker 1: part of a conversation I once had with Sam as
Speaker 1: he shares some stories about the team he guided to
Speaker 1: the super Bowl, the nineteen eighty eight AFC champions. A
Speaker 1: prominent member of that team, Solomon Wilcox, reflects on a
Speaker 1: key decision that Sam made that helped create team unity.
Speaker 1: And we'll also hear from Bengals President Mike Brown as
Speaker 1: he remembers the head coach who pioneered the no huddle offense.
Speaker 1: We'll also have the latest Bengals news on this pod,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss a key member of the coaching staff
Speaker 1: who is staying in Cincinnati and a Bengals assist the
Speaker 1: coach who has decided to move on. And as Bengals
Speaker 1: fans begin focusing on the NFL Draft, we'll get an
Speaker 1: insider's look at one of the leading candidates to be
Speaker 1: the number one overall pick, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow. All
Speaker 1: of that is straight ahead. But first, here's a quick
Speaker 1: reminder that you can have the latest edition of this
Speaker 1: podcast delivered right to your phone, tablet, or computer by
Speaker 1: subscribing on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or pod Bean.
Speaker 1: It's the greatest thing since generous corporate citizens. If you
Speaker 1: didn't see the news this week, Mike's car Wash recently
Speaker 1: presented a check for fifty four thousand, three hundred forty
Speaker 1: dollars to the Anthony Munio's Foundation. Throughout this season, Mike's
Speaker 1: Carwash pledged to donate one dollar for every Ultimate Wash
Speaker 1: purchased the day after the Bengals recorded two or more
Speaker 1: sack in a game that happened eight times and on
Speaker 1: Who Day Wednesdays. That's more than fifty thousand dollars that
Speaker 1: will impact the lives of Tristate kids. So thank you
Speaker 1: to Mike's car Wash. Their Ultimate Wash is outstanding, by
Speaker 1: the way, and to all of the generous corporate citizens
Speaker 1: that help make Cincinnati a great place to live. Now,
Speaker 1: let's get to this week's topics. I'm not a big
Speaker 1: sports memorabilia collector, but one of my favorite possessions is
Speaker 1: an auction item I was thrilled to purchase at Marvin
Speaker 1: Lewis's charity golf tournament several years ago. It was created
Speaker 1: by former Bengals coach Sam White, who passed away last
Speaker 1: week after battling cancer. A few years ago, Sam created
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty unique works of art, at least
Speaker 1: for avid football fans. They are diagrams of plays meticulously
Speaker 1: drawn with a white marker on a black canvas. Each
Speaker 1: drawing is a proximately sixteen by twenty inches, and they
Speaker 1: are plays from the Super Bowls that Sam was a
Speaker 1: part of. He was a backup quarterback with the Washington
Speaker 1: Redskins when they lost to Miami in Super Bowl seven.
Speaker 1: Sam was the director of the passing game under Bill
Speaker 1: Walsh when the forty nine Ers beat the Bengals in
Speaker 1: Super Bowl sixteen, and of course, White was the Bengals
Speaker 1: head coach in Super Bowl twenty three, losing in the
Speaker 1: final minute to Walsh's forty nine Ers. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: I asked Sam how often he thinks about that Super
Speaker 1: Bowl loss. Only when people ask me that question, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think about it. Austen, I did think about it.
Speaker 1: Austen obviously at the time and you know, part of
Speaker 1: the region if you think back on it. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight season went our way. We had a good team,
Speaker 1: we'd had a poor record the year before. It was
Speaker 1: a strike year the year before, and that substitute teams,
Speaker 1: and so I think we only played fifteen games on
Speaker 1: sixteen because we canceled one game. So it was a
Speaker 1: disrupted season, and the team came back and we did
Speaker 1: a few things in the off season to try to
Speaker 1: make that year a little bit better. Number One, I
Speaker 1: changed roommates during training camp. I made all the offensive
Speaker 1: guys room with a defensive guy. All the black guys
Speaker 1: were roomed with a white guy. So we had guys
Speaker 1: that probably didn't do as much casual conversation away from
Speaker 1: the field as they would have if I didn't put
Speaker 1: them in a room in about forty five minutes a
Speaker 1: day for bed check. They had a chance to kind
Speaker 1: of talk about their important things in their life. With
Speaker 1: the life's name one so many kids they had what
Speaker 1: they wanted to do with football, so over you know
Speaker 1: what was important to them, and I think it drew
Speaker 1: the team together better. And we also asked the YMCA
Speaker 1: if we could if we could come over there because
Speaker 1: we had a very small weight room. It was a
Speaker 1: pack full of good equipment, but it was small, and
Speaker 1: we would go over to the Hya anytime they wanted to,
Speaker 1: in a beautiful downtown facility, and it kind of set
Speaker 1: the tone for us to come back strong the next year.
Speaker 1: And the model of the year was we were going
Speaker 1: to finish every game. We were going to finish what
Speaker 1: we thought we had going in eighty seven. If you remember,
Speaker 1: eighty six was a good year too. We had won
Speaker 1: ten or eleven games, whatever it was. We were highly
Speaker 1: ranked offensively and defensively. But getting to the game itself,
Speaker 1: you have to preface everything with what happened the night before.
Speaker 1: Stanley Wilson, who was a great running back from Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: had almost lifetime in battle with cocaine, but he had
Speaker 1: survived it up to that point, and then the night
Speaker 1: before the game, he got into some cocaine and I
Speaker 1: had to kick him off the team. I can heavily
Speaker 1: criticized for that, by the way, then remember that, but
Speaker 1: the media, not so much the beat writers in Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: but the media around the country. The national media really
Speaker 1: jumped my case. And while the world didn't wait the
Speaker 1: next morning to analyze in Obviously, I couldn't have faced
Speaker 1: the team if I'd had done that. But we went
Speaker 1: in the game, and I think Stanley Wilson would have
Speaker 1: been a difference maker because the field had not been
Speaker 1: watered properly and it was coming up an eighteen inch chunks,
Speaker 1: because they recited the whole field and our big been
Speaker 1: you know, I've been backrunners like Brooks and Nicky Woods
Speaker 1: and Stanford. They would have been back and that field
Speaker 1: would come up in chunks and took away their quickness
Speaker 1: and their speed and the decision making somewhat where Stanley
Speaker 1: was more of a Barry Standers kind of runner, feet
Speaker 1: real close to the ground, wide stance, you know, dance
Speaker 1: fling a diamond. He could have made a miss, I
Speaker 1: think that day. But when you got in the game,
Speaker 1: it was close. I saw Jim Breach at the y.
Speaker 1: I saw me both Margaret Lewis's tourman and Anthony Moono's tourman.
Speaker 1: I reminded him that we had him kicking a field
Speaker 1: goal on a field that was carried up like that,
Speaker 1: and it was really a little bit right on the
Speaker 1: edge of his distance with a wind in his face
Speaker 1: and he made the field goal. We go ahead by three,
Speaker 1: but we left still. Remember Chris Collinsworth coming over and
Speaker 1: poking me with that Boni olibo he got from University
Speaker 1: of Florida and say in Sam, I think we left
Speaker 1: too much sign for number sixteen was the way he
Speaker 1: ordered that. Number sixteen, of course was Joe Montana on
Speaker 1: the other side, and Joe marched down the field and
Speaker 1: did his thing, and with thirty four seconds they scored
Speaker 1: to John Taylor. But if you remember we drop We
Speaker 1: had several key situations that went to forty nine er
Speaker 1: way that any one of which had gone our way.
Speaker 1: We stopped them the clocks from our side. They only
Speaker 1: had one time out. We win the game, but we
Speaker 1: dropped an interception a couple of plays before they throw
Speaker 1: the touchdown, or else we would have sat down on
Speaker 1: the ball and that would have been the ball. Wed
Speaker 1: have been World Camps. But I lead up all of
Speaker 1: that to this point that Paul Brown had been a
Speaker 1: by pole, a national champion, number one ranked high school
Speaker 1: coach at Ohio state national champion, and of course the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes teams were world champions in those days. Didn't
Speaker 1: have a Super Bowl and the one title he didn't have,
Speaker 1: the one trophy was the Super Bowl trophy. So it
Speaker 1: meant something to the players, I think. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: they wanted to win for themselves too, for the team,
Speaker 1: but they meant something for him to win. For Paul
Speaker 1: Brown to get that trophy certainly did to me. Having
Speaker 1: played for him, got my chance to start. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was a free agent. He gave me an opportunity.
Speaker 1: He and Mike Pete Brown, you know, I guess, bring
Speaker 1: him to camp, bring me to camp back in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, and I really wanted to kind of let
Speaker 1: this be one repayment for that favor that led to
Speaker 1: a career for me. And we fell thirty four segres short.
Speaker 1: So that's the sad news. The good news is we
Speaker 1: were one of the top two teams in the league.
Speaker 1: That we led the league in offense and defense that year.
Speaker 1: So they had a great year. Sam's had a great time.
Speaker 1: They actually had a lot bingle chiger evasion lobby the
Speaker 1: hotel for about two days till the smell got to him.
Speaker 1: They had to move him out of it. The great
Speaker 1: Sam White, who's intricate drawing of the Bengals best basic
Speaker 1: running play in nineteen eighty eight Proudly hangs in our Home.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Sam mentioned in that interview
Speaker 1: was his decision prior to that season to try to
Speaker 1: increase team unity by mixing up roommates in training camp.
Speaker 1: I discussed that with one of the safeties on that team,
Speaker 1: Solomon Wilcots, in training camp before your second season, Sam
Speaker 1: White decided to mix things up. He took black players
Speaker 1: and roomed them with white players. He took offensive players
Speaker 1: and roomed them with defensive players. What impact did that have?
Speaker 1: Bruce Rhymer's offensive lineman was my roommate. I would go.
Speaker 1: I would visit Eric Thomas. I think he was with
Speaker 1: Joe Walter. Anybody know Joe was a grumpy dude. You
Speaker 1: know Joe didn't play, but Eric is such a jolly
Speaker 1: guy that he could bring out the best in a
Speaker 1: Joe Walter. But Sam it worked. Sam knew what he
Speaker 1: was doing. Other than that, I'm a defensive back. We
Speaker 1: don't hang out with offensive lineman. And there's no way
Speaker 1: that a guy from California and Eric Thomas is gonna
Speaker 1: hang out with a guy from Texas like Joe Walter.
Speaker 1: So that kind of forward thinking. It did help us
Speaker 1: become closer as a team. We were able to spend
Speaker 1: time off the field with one another and with guys
Speaker 1: that we normally would not have spent time with. And
Speaker 1: I just remember Week two we went out and played
Speaker 1: Philadelphia that year. That's the year that the Eagles had
Speaker 1: a great team. Buddy Ryan's the coach. They got big
Speaker 1: Reggie White on the defensive line, Jerome Brown, Chris Carter,
Speaker 1: Mike Quick, Ran cunning Hemmy are a great team. And
Speaker 1: we went out there and they jumped out on us.
Speaker 1: But I just remember doing that period. We stuck together,
Speaker 1: the offensive line started taking over defense, we started making plays.
Speaker 1: We got out of there with a win. But I
Speaker 1: think it was on that day, Week two and eighty eight,
Speaker 1: that we really knew that we had a chance to
Speaker 1: be a great team, and we were close and we
Speaker 1: had one another's back no matter what happened, And even
Speaker 1: when we went through some bumpy spots in the season,
Speaker 1: there was never any doubt that we were kind of
Speaker 1: a team of destiny. That Bengals team went twelve and
Speaker 1: four in the regular season before beating Seattle and Buffalo
Speaker 1: to advance to the Super Bowl. Some final thoughts on
Speaker 1: Sam White come from Bengals president Mike Brown. Sam's a
Speaker 1: very great guy in the quick minded, he was spontaneous,
Speaker 1: and we all remember the fun moments at the time
Speaker 1: when the rules were that if the crowd got too
Speaker 1: noisy or unruly, the home head coach was given the
Speaker 1: microphone on the field to attempt to dampen their behavior.
Speaker 1: This was an impossible request, and yet with Sam somehow
Speaker 1: it all worked out right. One time when things were
Speaker 1: getting unruly and Mike was put in his face and
Speaker 1: his comment was along the lines of this isn't Cleveland.
Speaker 1: You don't live in Cleveland, and everyone laughed and they
Speaker 1: shut up. It was remarkable. So when Sam hit the
Speaker 1: right chord and he did a lot, it worked. He
Speaker 1: was very imaginative as a coach. We did new and
Speaker 1: different things. The hurry up was something that he brought
Speaker 1: to pro football. Others over the years took credit, but
Speaker 1: he was really the one that innovated it. An inventive
Speaker 1: coach and a kind and caring man, gone too soon
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy four. Now let's move on
Speaker 1: to the latest Bengals news. A few days ago, when
Speaker 1: we learned that the New York Giants were hiring the
Speaker 1: Patriots special teams coordinator Joe Judge to be their new
Speaker 1: head coach. I sent a text to my friend Bob Socy,
Speaker 1: who calls Patriots games on the radio. I told him
Speaker 1: I was predicting that the Patriots would hire Bengal special
Speaker 1: teams coach Darren Simmons to replace Judge. It made sense.
Speaker 1: Simmons had turned down a contract extension from the Bengals
Speaker 1: earlier this year, and Bill Belichick said so many nice
Speaker 1: things about Darren before the two teams played in December
Speaker 1: that it almost felt like he was recruiting him. Well.
Speaker 1: I was delighted to be wrong. Simmons reportedly agreed to
Speaker 1: a contract extension with the Bengals this week, which is
Speaker 1: great news for several reasons. Number one, there isn't a
Speaker 1: better special teams coordinator in the NFL. The analytical website
Speaker 1: Football outsiders dot com ranked the Bengals number one overall
Speaker 1: in special teams play this year, and Simmons is universally
Speaker 1: respected throughout the NFL. But just as importantly, I think
Speaker 1: it's a strong statement about Zach Taylor. Darren Simmons joined
Speaker 1: the Bengals coaching staff and Marvin Lewis's first season, and
Speaker 1: has been the team's special teams coordinator for the last
Speaker 1: seventeen years. He interviewed for the head coaching job after
Speaker 1: the team parted ways with Marvin and was undoubtedly disappointed
Speaker 1: when the Bengals chose to go with Zach Taylor instead.
Speaker 1: The fact that he has decided to stay shows his
Speaker 1: respect for Taylor and the relationship that they formed in
Speaker 1: Zach's first season. While Darren is staying, linebackers coach Tim
Speaker 1: Luca Boo is leaving the Bengals to become the defensive
Speaker 1: coordinator at Boston College under new head coach Jeff Hafley.
Speaker 1: The two coaches have worked together at three previous stops.
Speaker 1: No word yet on what the Bengals planned to do
Speaker 1: to replace Luca Boo. On Monday night, Bengals fans will
Speaker 1: watch the college Football National Championship Game with keen interest
Speaker 1: that goes beyond seeing if LSU or Clemson will win
Speaker 1: the title. They will be focused on LSU quarterback Joe Burrow,
Speaker 1: who is widely projected to go number one overall to
Speaker 1: the Bengals in this year's NFL Draft. Burrow almost came
Speaker 1: to Cincinnati last year after deciding to transfer from Ohio State.
Speaker 1: His final two schools were the University of Cincinnati or LSU.
Speaker 1: As much as I would have loved to see him
Speaker 1: in a Bearcatch uniform and call his games, he obviously
Speaker 1: made a great choice. Burrows tide to UC was head
Speaker 1: coach Luke Fickle, who was an assistant at Ohio State
Speaker 1: during Burroughs first two college seasons. I asked the Bearcats
Speaker 1: head coach what he admires about the Heisman Trophy went
Speaker 1: in quarterback. His competitive spirit, which is a pride of
Speaker 1: our program, of pride of where he came from. To me,
Speaker 1: is what makes him what he is. You know, whatever
Speaker 1: you measure him at, whatever his arm strength is, he
Speaker 1: plays way above it. And it's just his love for
Speaker 1: the game. His competitive spirit. There's just something about him,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that because he's had to
Speaker 1: earn everything he's got. Not that he didn't you know,
Speaker 1: wasn't the best player on his team in high school,
Speaker 1: but you know where he was before, and being you know,
Speaker 1: third on the depth chart, being alive in some scrimmages
Speaker 1: where you know you're you're getting pounded weekend and week
Speaker 1: out has really helped continue to not make him who
Speaker 1: he is because he was special coming in, I think,
Speaker 1: but grow and what it is that he does, his competitiveness,
Speaker 1: his ability to understand the football game and know that
Speaker 1: it hasn't been just handed. I think that that means
Speaker 1: he got an opportunity to continue to grow into last
Speaker 1: not a flash in the pan, not somebody that's going
Speaker 1: to be rattled because things don't go his way right
Speaker 1: right away, because that's kind of what it's been like
Speaker 1: for him the last three or so years. As much
Speaker 1: as you would have loved to have coached him here
Speaker 1: where you thrilled for how things turned out for him,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt. I mean I admired the kid from
Speaker 1: the time he walked in the door before when we
Speaker 1: had him. So when he made a decision to what
Speaker 1: he did a year ago, you know, his first year
Speaker 1: down at LSU, to obviously this year couldn't be happier
Speaker 1: for him. Obviously you look back and you said he
Speaker 1: made the right decision, not just in where he went,
Speaker 1: but to do what it is he did, to challenge himself,
Speaker 1: to put him in a situation where there couldn't have
Speaker 1: been any comfort to it, and I think that's why
Speaker 1: he's not only obviously he's the Heisman Trophy winner, but
Speaker 1: to take those chances. If he was gonna bet, he
Speaker 1: was gonna bet on himself. This might have been a
Speaker 1: little bit of a safer bet, not because of a
Speaker 1: conference or anything like that, but knowing who he was
Speaker 1: going to and knowing what he could trust. But it
Speaker 1: showed me that the trust and he had in himself
Speaker 1: and what he could do and what he was willing
Speaker 1: to give up to do it. Burrow goes into Monday's
Speaker 1: championship game having completed seventy eight percent of his passes
Speaker 1: this season for more than five thousand yards, with fifty
Speaker 1: five touchdown passes and only six interceptions. Using the NFL formula,
Speaker 1: his passer rating is one forty five point two. That's
Speaker 1: going to do it for this episode of the podcast.
Speaker 1: If you haven't done so already, don't forget to subscribe
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, and if you have a minute,
Speaker 1: give it a rating or share a comment. Five star
Speaker 1: ratings help more Bengals fans find this podcast. I'm Dan Horde,
Speaker 1: and thanks for listening to The Bengals Booth podcast.