"Where Are They Now?"-Doug Williams

[DIESEL TROLL]

Doug Williams - Super Bowl Memories

Former Washington and Tampa Bay quarterback Doug Williams reflects on the Bucs' Super Bowl victory, and his own MVP game.

Tim Giles

NFLPLAYERS.COM

05/23/2003

For a franchise that has served as the measure of NFL futility for the better part of two decades, Tampa Bay's 48-21 rout over Oakland in Super Bowl XXXVII was a bittersweet moment.

"I've got to believe that coming from where we were in this organization, the ridicule and the heartbreak, it's a great thing," said safety John Lynch, one of five current Bucs who once wore the orange uniforms that were a symbol of the team's ineptitude for so many years.

Given their inauspicious history, the NFL worst 0-26 start, losing 10 or more games 13 times, the 14 straight losing seasons from 1983-1996, there was certainly reason for the sense of relief felt by some members of the Bucs amid the joyousness of their triumph.

But there was also perhaps an eerie sense of irony, if not simply coincidence surrounding the occasion as well.

For it was 15 years ago on that same San Diego field that a former Buccaneers player, a man who first helped give Tampa Bay fans something to cheer about, brought his team to the pinnacle of NFL success while helping to ease the burden of many who would follow in his footsteps.

On that final day of January in 1987, Doug Williams, the quietly confident quarterback of the Washington Redskins, commanded his team to victory in Super Bowl XXII. Williams, who came into the league as a first-round draft choice (17th overall in 1978) of Tampa Bay, completed 18 of 29 passes for 340 yards and four touchdowns, earning MVP honors in Washington's 42-10 drubbing of the Denver Broncos.

Less than 10 years before, Williams had taken over a Buccaneers team that was undeniably dreadful and led it to three playoff appearances in five seasons.

Williams' heroics in San Diego were another in a line of great Super Bowl performances. But perhaps none has had more impact on the look of the game, especially at the quarterback position, than Williams'. The memory was not in the score alone, nor was it the four Super Bowl records that came from his cannon right arm that afternoon. Although in retrospect it made the significance of the moment more validating.

Instead, it was a combination of the unquestionable dominance of his play, along with the poise and intelligence displayed by Williams on the world's biggest stage that helped lay to rest the claim that blacks did not possess the "intangibles" necessary to succeed as NFL quarterbacks.

Considering that Williams' breathtaking performance almost got derailed just minutes into the game makes his accomplishment all the more magical.

With the Broncos leading 10-0 late in the first quarter, Williams came out of the Redskins huddle looking to get his team untracked. While dropping back to pass, Williams' right leg slid out from under him. The result was an awkward fall and a hyperextended left knee.

"I can remember the trainer (Bubby Tyer) coming out," Williams recalled. "I just said, 'Just let me lay her for a second. Don't touch me right now. Let me lay here for a minute and let the pain just go away.' (On the sidelines) Joe Gibbs walked down to me and said 'Can you go?' and I said 'Yeah coach.' He just said, 'Okay then, we're going to get this sucker to running.'"

Afterwards, Williams told reporters that "I just hope in 25 years, some kids who've grown up will say, "I remember when Doug Williams overcame all this adversity."

Williams didn't have to wait that long.

"It was a big deal to see him play in that game," says Tennessee quarterback Steve McNair, who was two weeks shy of his 15th birthday at the time of William's heroics. "For him to be one of the few black quarterbacks in the league, and to do well. And not just to win, but to be MVP. It was big."

"Walking into that dressing room (after the game) I didn't care whether or not I played football again because I looked at it from the standpoint of what Martin Luther King used to always say about getting to the mountaintop," Williams said. "I felt like as player I'd made it to the mountaintop."

After nagging injuries (the result of five knee surgeries, a back operation, an emergency appendectomy, and a separated shoulder suffered throughout his 9-year career) forced him into retirement two years later, Williams continued to make football his life's blood. Williams began a coaching career at Northeast High School in his hometown of Zachary, La., before moving on to coach for the U.S. Naval Academy and the Scottish Claymores of the World Football League. Williams also served as a scout for the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars before taking his first job at the collegiate level as head coach at Morehouse College in 1997.

But it was only a prelude to what would be another monumental moment in Williams' historical career.

Following the end of his first season at Morehouse, Williams was named head coach at Grambling State University, the same place where just two decades ago the skinny kid with the cannon right arm and crawfish drawl took over the starting job midway through his freshman season and guided the Tigers to a 40-6 career record under the tutelage of legendary coach Eddie Robinson.

For the man who had endured both personal and professional hardship on the path to NFL supremacy, his football journey had come full circle.

"I didn't come in trying to fill Eddie Robinson's shoes," Williams said of the Hall of Fame Coach he replaced. Robinson coached at the Louisiana school for over a half a century. "You pick them up. You get them bronzed. And you put them on a pedestal. Because there'll never, ever be another Eddie Robinson.

"All I asked was, whoever comes in, let him put his own shoes up under the desk."

Williams has certainly left his own footprints on the Grambling program since moving to the sidelines, guiding a team that was coming off three consecutive losing seasons when he took over the program to a winning mark in only his second season at the helm.

In 2000, Grambling posted a 10-2 record and won the first of back-to-back-to-back Southwestern Athletic Conference Championships. The Tigers have also won three straight NCAA Division I-A National Black College Championships.

Williams 43-15 mark (.741 winning percentage) in his first five seasons as Grambling's head coach compares favorable with Robison's early seasons. And two years ago he joined his old coach when Williams was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

So where does Williams go from here?

Robinson certainly has a suggestion.

"I told him the other day, 'As I went to 57, if you could ever go 43, we could go a hundred together," Robinson said. A hundred years at Grambling.'

" Now that, said Williams, "would be a mountain even he couldn't dream of scaling."

OH, THE MEMORIES............(sigh)

[Golgo-13]

Hopefully our luck with QB's from Louisiana can continue. With all the talk about western Pennsylvania, Louisiania has sure had it's share of QB's as well.