Tampa, Florida					Thursday, September 09, 2010

The Homecoming of Doug Williams
Friday, February 13, 2004
TAMPA—In another time, when it was okay to be sentimental, emotional, to say thank you, we’d have hung a banner over Franklin Street today that blare: “Welcome Home, Doug Williams.’’ So, instead, we can say it here: WELCOME HOME DOUG WILLIAMS! Yep, he’s back. But, not as quarterback, the big galoot of the strong arm and commitment to football and the right things that took the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Orange to the verge of the Super Bowl, and giant strides forward politically, has come home to his Tampa to help the Bucs find more like him, like Joe Gibbs did him at all-black Grambling and convincing the late Coach John McKay Williams would be as good as he would be. Doug Williams has come home to Tampa as a talent man for Coach Jon Gruden and General Manager Bruce Allen, the Buc owning Malcolm Glazer Family, as another very politically correct move, to satisfy another ambition of Williams, and because it was the right thing to do. It is the right thing. It is the prudent thing. It is the smart thing to do, He got his informal Welcome Home Wednesday night at Fleming’s fine restaurant just down the street in Tampa from the somewhat renovated and expanded Number One Bucko Place where Williams and his Bucko teammates practiced his five (1978-82) years and 67 starts for the good, the bad, the sometimes ugly, seasons here at old Tampa Stadium, also, just down the street. He got that informal welcome at Fleming’s where he had his glad-to-have you dinner from the new Buc architects, Gruden and Allen and his talent division boss Mark Dominik, nearby diner George Steinbrenner, Yankee owner/boss and Williams admirer always, and others there who recognized Williams. That blew the cover, made it a headline the Thursday it was supposed to be announced, increasing the size of the Buc press conference Thursday afternoon at One Buc including old Buc pal players former QB Parnell (Paydirt) Dickinson, linebacker Richard (Batman) Wood (heading soon back to Europe to coach linemen at the Frankfurt, Germany NFL Europe franchise and Doug’s favorite receiver, All-World Pro Jimmie Giles. Dickinson and Giles are Tampa insurance executives. No one will ever forget the Williams to Giles hookup, the big and mighty Giles, now even bigger and mightier, as is the 6-5 and plenty Williams, a 15-20 yard over the middle for so many yards, so many thrills and so many touchdowns that became Buc wins. My, Williams was exciting. He was big, strong, could move, well, former NFL quarterback Gary Danielson once said it best: “Doug Williams has the ability to do what we all want to do as quarterbacks—win a game with your own talents.’’ He often did. Have to think for the championship season, the 1979 season, the sudden emergence with the NFL’s best defense and an offense built around Williams that moved to the National Conference title game at Tampa Stadium that was lost 9-0 to the Los Angeles Rams. It may have been won had an early Williams touchdown pass not been dropped in the Ram end zone that would have produced a 7-0 lead for Batman and All-Pro Lee Roy Selman and the rest of the best defenders in the NFL surely would have done. I believed that then. I believe it now. Think of Doug and you have to think of him leaping, cart wheeling into the end zone for a late score at Tampa Stadium that pulled the Bucs to within a point of the Minnesota Vikings at 23-24, only to have field goal man Billy Capece, a dependable man, miss the extra point. After the game—what was when Coach McKay made his famous statement: Capece is Kaput!. And he was. Gone, was what he was. Then Florida Governor Bob Graham, serving as a sports reporter for me and The Tampa Tribune in that scheme of his to try to work at all trades, was assigned to cover McKay, and he did a fine job, considering the developments. The old coach was at his sarcastic, caustic, r-rated best, not an easy post-game conference to report in a family newspaper, but Reporter Bob did just fine. Williams could throw short, long, on a rope or a rainbow trajectory, hard, soft, on the run, dropping back, running forward (the hardest), could scramble, in a pack, in the open, and in traffic. He was big and he was tough and he loved the game, inside the lines	and now outside of them as a coach or a talent scout. He also could throw high and low, long and short, as all did at times. Early in games, Doug was not disinclined to throw outs high and hard, causing one writer to suggest: “Send Doug Williams to Iran. He is the only one who can overthrow the Aytollah.’’ He loved that. He also liked to pull your leg, then and now, like: “That’s water over the bridge.’’ Like: “It don’t take no Phi Beta Kappa to know that.’’ Like: “Huh. All my life,’’ when asked surely the Super Bowl press conference’s worst question when he was readying to lead the Washington Redskins to the Super Bowl championship and him to the Super Bow MVP performance, when asked; “How long have you been a black quarterback.’’ No, he wasn’t angry. Never was about such question son that subject. He was the first black QB to reach the goals he did. He was a proponent of black progress, at all levels, since his college days at Grambling as a player then head coach, and now as an NFL executive with the Buckos. At the crowded press conference Thursday at One Bucko, he recalled his passions and milestones and remembered, “vividly’’ that I had written a story with him during his Buc days when I asked him what he was doing as he stood beside me at the playing of the national anthem at old Stadium. He remembered he said he was counting—counting executives on the sidelines. There weren’t any, he said then and Thursday and I wrote about it and he liked that. He was passionate about his race and his brothers and sisters and is today. When Gibbs and McKay drafted him in the first round in a trade of the over all Number One pick that also brought Giles to Tampa, plenty thought it was a risk and it was, in more was than one. And times were not always rosy. Indeed, the then owner Hugh Culverhouse let Williams go from the Bucs to the old United States Football League rather than pay him what he wanted—and so many of us felt he deserved. He never forgot it. Has not to this day. But, Culverhouse and his associates are gone, and this is a different team and ownership, said Williams, the one that won the Super Bowl, one of which he is so proud, and for whom he will work “and seek to do that I can to help the great people of Tampa get the kind of players and teams they and these owners, Coach Gruden and G.M. Allen deserve.’’ He couldn’t wait to get back where he belongs, he said. Hard as it was to leave his precious Grambling, well, this is where his heart is. Oh, Doug Williams said so much more. He was overcome by his welcome by the public and the media, a huge, appreciative assembly, the Glazers, Allen, Gruden and his pals like Giles and Woods and Dickson there to say welcome home for us all. The return of the prodigal was an idea Gruden, a sentimental soul, agreed upon by the owners and implemented by his new personnel associate, Allen. It was Gruden who brought all of the Buc alums to Tampa last year for a reunion, who asked Williams to speak to last year’s Super Bowl team and who, like “me,’’ said “Doug, has a great feeling for history. If you do not appreciate history, you have a problem understanding the future.” Williams was thoughtful and philosophical throughout the press conference. He said he just found out his 11-year-old son wants to be a Buccaneer, as he was, and he couldn’t believe how many people recognized him since he arrived this week, but said, when asked about the so called curse some said he said he put on the Bucs when he left after the acrimonious last days with Culverhouse, he asked: “If I had put a curse on them, I can promise you that they wouldn’t have won any.’’ This is a no-lose move, the return of Doug Williams to Tampa and the Bucs he loves again. Has to help. Will help. “No question about it,’’ said buddy Giles. Got another winner on the roster and he’ll find more,’’ said Batman Woods. “Doug knows football players, and Doug knows winning.’’ There still is time for the banner, out at One Buc Place perhaps, his home again. That other stuff, heck, that’s water under the bridge. Don’t take no Phi Beta Kappa to know that. ##
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