Bengals Booth Podcast: Remembering Sam

the super Bowl, the nineteen eighty eight AFC champions. A prominent member of that team, Solomon Wilcox, reflects on a key decision that Sam made that helped create team unity. And we'll also hear from Bengals President Mike Brown as he remembers the head coach who pioneered the no huddle offense. We'll also have the latest Bengals news on this pod, as we'll discuss a key member of the coaching staff who is staying in Cincinnati and a Bengals assist the

coach who has decided to move on. And as Bengals fans begin focusing on the NFL Draft, we'll get an insider's look at one of the leading candidates to be the number one overall pick, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow. All of that is straight ahead. But first, here's a quick reminder that you can have the latest edition of this podcast delivered right to your phone, tablet, or computer by subscribing on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or pod Bean.

It's the greatest thing since generous corporate citizens. If you didn't see the news this week, Mike's car Wash recently presented a check for fifty four thousand, three hundred forty dollars to the Anthony Munio's Foundation. Throughout this season, Mike's Carwash pledged to donate one dollar for every Ultimate Wash purchased the day after the Bengals recorded two or more sack in a game that happened eight times and on Who Day Wednesdays. That's more than fifty thousand dollars that

will impact the lives of Tristate kids. So thank you to Mike's car Wash. Their Ultimate Wash is outstanding, by the way, and to all of the generous corporate citizens that help make Cincinnati a great place to live. Now, let's get to this week's topics. I'm not a big sports memorabilia collector, but one of my favorite possessions is an auction item I was thrilled to purchase at Marvin

Lewis's charity golf tournament several years ago. It was created by former Bengals coach Sam White, who passed away last week after battling cancer. A few years ago, Sam created one hundred and fifty unique works of art, at least for avid football fans. They are diagrams of plays meticulously drawn with a white marker on a black canvas. Each drawing is a proximately sixteen by twenty inches, and they are plays from the Super Bowls that Sam was a

part of. He was a backup quarterback with the Washington Redskins when they lost to Miami in Super Bowl seven. Sam was the director of the passing game under Bill Walsh when the forty nine Ers beat the Bengals in Super Bowl sixteen, and of course, White was the Bengals head coach in Super Bowl twenty three, losing in the final minute to Walsh's forty nine Ers. A few years ago, I asked Sam how often he thinks about that Super Bowl loss. Only when people ask me that question, you know,

I don't think about it. Austen, I did think about it. Austen obviously at the time and you know, part of the region if you think back on it. In nineteen eighty eight season went our way. We had a good team, we'd had a poor record the year before. It was a strike year the year before, and that substitute teams, and so I think we only played fifteen games on

sixteen because we canceled one game. So it was a disrupted season, and the team came back and we did a few things in the off season to try to make that year a little bit better. Number One, I changed roommates during training camp. I made all the offensive guys room with a defensive guy. All the black guys

were roomed with a white guy. So we had guys that probably didn't do as much casual conversation away from the field as they would have if I didn't put them in a room in about forty five minutes a day for bed check. They had a chance to kind of talk about their important things in their life. With the life's name one so many kids they had what they wanted to do with football, so over you know what was important to them, and I think it drew

the team together better. And we also asked the YMCA if we could if we could come over there because we had a very small weight room. It was a pack full of good equipment, but it was small, and we would go over to the Hya anytime they wanted to, in a beautiful downtown facility, and it kind of set the tone for us to come back strong the next year. And the model of the year was we were going to finish every game. We were going to finish what

we thought we had going in eighty seven. If you remember, eighty six was a good year too. We had won ten or eleven games, whatever it was. We were highly ranked offensively and defensively. But getting to the game itself, you have to preface everything with what happened the night before.

Stanley Wilson, who was a great running back from Oklahoma, had almost lifetime in battle with cocaine, but he had survived it up to that point, and then the night before the game, he got into some cocaine and I had to kick him off the team. I can heavily criticized for that, by the way, then remember that, but the media, not so much the beat writers in Cincinnati, but the media around the country. The national media really

jumped my case. And while the world didn't wait the next morning to analyze in Obviously, I couldn't have faced the team if I'd had done that. But we went in the game, and I think Stanley Wilson would have been a difference maker because the field had not been watered properly and it was coming up an eighteen inch chunks, because they recited the whole field and our big been you know, I've been backrunners like Brooks and Nicky Woods

and Stanford. They would have been back and that field would come up in chunks and took away their quickness and their speed and the decision making somewhat where Stanley was more of a Barry Standers kind of runner, feet real close to the ground, wide stance, you know, dance fling a diamond. He could have made a miss, I think that day. But when you got in the game, it was close. I saw Jim Breach at the y. I saw me both Margaret Lewis's tourman and Anthony Moono's tourman.

I reminded him that we had him kicking a field goal on a field that was carried up like that, and it was really a little bit right on the edge of his distance with a wind in his face and he made the field goal. We go ahead by three, but we left still. Remember Chris Collinsworth coming over and poking me with that Boni olibo he got from University of Florida and say in Sam, I think we left too much sign for number sixteen was the way he

ordered that. Number sixteen, of course was Joe Montana on the other side, and Joe marched down the field and did his thing, and with thirty four seconds they scored to John Taylor. But if you remember we drop We had several key situations that went to forty nine er way that any one of which had gone our way. We stopped them the clocks from our side. They only

had one time out. We win the game, but we dropped an interception a couple of plays before they throw the touchdown, or else we would have sat down on the ball and that would have been the ball. Wed have been World Camps. But I lead up all of that to this point that Paul Brown had been a by pole, a national champion, number one ranked high school coach at Ohio state national champion, and of course the

Great Lakes teams were world champions in those days. Didn't have a Super Bowl and the one title he didn't have, the one trophy was the Super Bowl trophy. So it meant something to the players, I think. I mean, obviously they wanted to win for themselves too, for the team, but they meant something for him to win. For Paul Brown to get that trophy certainly did to me. Having played for him, got my chance to start. I mean, I was a free agent. He gave me an opportunity.

He and Mike Pete Brown, you know, I guess, bring him to camp, bring me to camp back in nineteen sixty eight, and I really wanted to kind of let this be one repayment for that favor that led to a career for me. And we fell thirty four segres short. So that's the sad news. The good news is we were one of the top two teams in the league. That we led the league in offense and defense that year. So they had a great year. Sam's had a great time.

They actually had a lot bingle chiger evasion lobby the hotel for about two days till the smell got to him. They had to move him out of it. The great Sam White, who's intricate drawing of the Bengals best basic running play in nineteen eighty eight Proudly hangs in our Home. One of the things that Sam mentioned in that interview was his decision prior to that season to try to increase team unity by mixing up roommates in training camp.

I discussed that with one of the safeties on that team, Solomon Wilcots, in training camp before your second season, Sam White decided to mix things up. He took black players and roomed them with white players. He took offensive players and roomed them with defensive players. What impact did that have? Bruce Rhymer's offensive lineman was my roommate. I would go. I would visit Eric Thomas. I think he was with

Joe Walter. Anybody know Joe was a grumpy dude. You know Joe didn't play, but Eric is such a jolly guy that he could bring out the best in a Joe Walter. But Sam it worked. Sam knew what he was doing. Other than that, I'm a defensive back. We don't hang out with offensive lineman. And there's no way that a guy from California and Eric Thomas is gonna hang out with a guy from Texas like Joe Walter. So that kind of forward thinking. It did help us

become closer as a team. We were able to spend time off the field with one another and with guys that we normally would not have spent time with. And I just remember Week two we went out and played Philadelphia that year. That's the year that the Eagles had a great team. Buddy Ryan's the coach. They got big Reggie White on the defensive line, Jerome Brown, Chris Carter, Mike Quick, Ran cunning Hemmy are a great team. And we went out there and they jumped out on us.

But I just remember doing that period. We stuck together, the offensive line started taking over defense, we started making plays. We got out of there with a win. But I think it was on that day, Week two and eighty eight, that we really knew that we had a chance to be a great team, and we were close and we had one another's back no matter what happened, And even when we went through some bumpy spots in the season, there was never any doubt that we were kind of

a team of destiny. That Bengals team went twelve and four in the regular season before beating Seattle and Buffalo to advance to the Super Bowl. Some final thoughts on Sam White come from Bengals president Mike Brown. Sam's a very great guy in the quick minded, he was spontaneous, and we all remember the fun moments at the time when the rules were that if the crowd got too noisy or unruly, the home head coach was given the microphone on the field to attempt to dampen their behavior.

This was an impossible request, and yet with Sam somehow it all worked out right. One time when things were getting unruly and Mike was put in his face and his comment was along the lines of this isn't Cleveland. You don't live in Cleveland, and everyone laughed and they shut up. It was remarkable. So when Sam hit the right chord and he did a lot, it worked. He was very imaginative as a coach. We did new and different things. The hurry up was something that he brought

to pro football. Others over the years took credit, but he was really the one that innovated it. An inventive coach and a kind and caring man, gone too soon at the age of seventy four. Now let's move on to the latest Bengals news. A few days ago, when we learned that the New York Giants were hiring the Patriots special teams coordinator Joe Judge to be their new head coach. I sent a text to my friend Bob Socy,

who calls Patriots games on the radio. I told him I was predicting that the Patriots would hire Bengal special teams coach Darren Simmons to replace Judge. It made sense. Simmons had turned down a contract extension from the Bengals earlier this year, and Bill Belichick said so many nice things about Darren before the two teams played in December that it almost felt like he was recruiting him. Well.

I was delighted to be wrong. Simmons reportedly agreed to a contract extension with the Bengals this week, which is great news for several reasons. Number one, there isn't a better special teams coordinator in the NFL. The analytical website Football outsiders dot com ranked the Bengals number one overall in special teams play this year, and Simmons is universally respected throughout the NFL. But just as importantly, I think

it's a strong statement about Zach Taylor. Darren Simmons joined the Bengals coaching staff and Marvin Lewis's first season, and has been the team's special teams coordinator for the last seventeen years. He interviewed for the head coaching job after the team parted ways with Marvin and was undoubtedly disappointed when the Bengals chose to go with Zach Taylor instead. The fact that he has decided to stay shows his respect for Taylor and the relationship that they formed in

Zach's first season. While Darren is staying, linebackers coach Tim Luca Boo is leaving the Bengals to become the defensive coordinator at Boston College under new head coach Jeff Hafley. The two coaches have worked together at three previous stops. No word yet on what the Bengals planned to do to replace Luca Boo. On Monday night, Bengals fans will watch the college Football National Championship Game with keen interest that goes beyond seeing if LSU or Clemson will win

the title. They will be focused on LSU quarterback Joe Burrow, who is widely projected to go number one overall to the Bengals in this year's NFL Draft. Burrow almost came to Cincinnati last year after deciding to transfer from Ohio State. His final two schools were the University of Cincinnati or LSU. As much as I would have loved to see him in a Bearcatch uniform and call his games, he obviously

made a great choice. Burrows tide to UC was head coach Luke Fickle, who was an assistant at Ohio State during Burroughs first two college seasons. I asked the Bearcats head coach what he admires about the Heisman Trophy went in quarterback. His competitive spirit, which is a pride of our program, of pride of where he came from. To me, is what makes him what he is. You know, whatever you measure him at, whatever his arm strength is, he plays way above it. And it's just his love for

the game. His competitive spirit. There's just something about him, you know. And I think that because he's had to

earn everything he's got. Not that he didn't you know, wasn't the best player on his team in high school, but you know where he was before, and being you know, third on the depth chart, being alive in some scrimmages where you know you're you're getting pounded weekend and week out has really helped continue to not make him who he is because he was special coming in, I think, but grow and what it is that he does, his competitiveness, his ability to understand the football game and know that

it hasn't been just handed. I think that that means he got an opportunity to continue to grow into last not a flash in the pan, not somebody that's going to be rattled because things don't go his way right right away, because that's kind of what it's been like for him the last three or so years. As much as you would have loved to have coached him here where you thrilled for how things turned out for him,

there's no doubt. I mean I admired the kid from the time he walked in the door before when we had him. So when he made a decision to what he did a year ago, you know, his first year down at LSU, to obviously this year couldn't be happier

for him. Obviously you look back and you said he made the right decision, not just in where he went, but to do what it is he did, to challenge himself, to put him in a situation where there couldn't have been any comfort to it, and I think that's why he's not only obviously he's the Heisman Trophy winner, but to take those chances. If he was gonna bet, he

was gonna bet on himself. This might have been a little bit of a safer bet, not because of a conference or anything like that, but knowing who he was going to and knowing what he could trust. But it showed me that the trust and he had in himself and what he could do and what he was willing to give up to do it. Burrow goes into Monday's championship game having completed seventy eight percent of his passes this season for more than five thousand yards, with fifty

five touchdown passes and only six interceptions. Using the NFL formula, his passer rating is one forty five point two. That's going to do it for this episode of the podcast. If you haven't done so already, don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you have a minute, give it a rating or share a comment. Five star ratings help more Bengals fans find this podcast. I'm Dan Horde, and thanks for listening to The Bengals Booth podcast.