November 13, 1977

Nobody expects a franchise team to be competitive from the beginning, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did not challenge anyone’s expectations, at least not at first. But the Buccaneers didn’t get any of the bounces that every team, even the worst in a given season, get. After a week seven loss to the Miami Dolphins, none of the rest of the games on their schedule was even as close as one score. Expansion draft rules meant the Buccaneers and their fellow newcomers, the Seattle Seahawks, could only choose among the most expendable of the other twenty-six teams, and medical histories weren’t provided for some of these open-box specials. Injuries piled up, and other teams piled on. The Buccaneers were winless for the entire season without even a bad break to dwell on and wonder about. It was the first winless season in the NFL since World War II.

Their coach, John McKay, took all of this in relative stride. Though he was a national champion on four different occasions with USC, he downplayed the differences between the college ranks and the pros, saying “I lost 51-0 in college too, it feels about the same.” McKay, already a Tonight Show regular, still had his Carson-tested comedic timing, often dropping bon mots about his disappointing team like “well, we didn’t block well, but we made up for it by not tackling.” Asked about his team’s execution he replied, “I’d be in favor of it.” Once he turned his ire on the press and said that most of them couldn’t tell a football from a bunch of bananas, and at the next press conference, he found a bunch of bananas left for him at the podium. He said then, “some of you couldn’t tell a football from a Mercedes-Benz.”

There were notes of hope in 1977, in the form of a defense that was quickly shaping itself into a professional unit. Lee Roy Selmon, their first draft choice, anchored a formidable defensive line, with his brother Dewey leading the linebacking corps. The improvement was sharp, with the Bucs cutting their points allowed almost in half. The defense was also opportunistic, scoring four touchdowns throughout the year. The problem was on offense. Those four touchdowns by the defense in 1977 nearly matched the offense, which only scored seven for the year. The two men expected to battle for the starting quarterback position, Gary Huff and Mike Boryla, both went down for knee injuries during the preseason. The motley crew that remained was stuck throwing passes to lackluster skill players that included disappointing rookie Ricky Bell, taken instead of Tony Dorsett at the top of the 1977 draft for his USC connections, and coach’s son Rich McKay, who couldn’t explain what he was doing out there except by pointing at the last name on his jersey. Even the best defense of all time can’t be expected to do all the work. In their seventh month of games the Bucs were still looking for the first win in franchise history, and one of their last remaining opportunities was against the New York Giants.

The Giants were far removed from the glory days of the 50s and 60s, and many spent many years in the seventies far removed from New York itself. The Giants had traditionally played their home games in Yankee Stadium, but when the House That Ruth Built went into renovations in 1973, the Giants couldn’t find suitable grounds in New York. They played two seasons in the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut, two miserable seasons where they only won one of these farcical home games. After one more bad year sharing Shea Stadium with the Jets, the Giants were finally ready to open Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

There weren’t a lot of Giants fans left by this point, but those left were insulted that the team was setting up across the river. A few local politicians made hay by insisting that the Giants would not get a parade should they win a title. The logo changed from the iconic block-lettered NY to helmets that simply read “GIANTS” in the same font. Had they performed well, the Giants really could have made things awkward for an Ed Koch or Abe Beame, but instead they did as the famous headline suggested and dropped dead. In 1976, they were the last non-Buccaneers team to win a game. A midseason coaching change provoked something close to a spark, but new coach John McVay was often overmatched, and the skinflint ownership group did not even supply him with a full retinue of assistants. There was no dedicated quarterbacks coach, for example, a dangerous way to save money when all three rostered quarterbacks were rookies in need of development.

The slightest bit of improvement would have been seized on by fans, and there was a very slight improvement, though the Giants were still nobody’s idea of a good team. Their lone Pro Bowler, Brad Van Pelt, oversaw a defense that firmly in the middle of the pack, but the offense, like Tampa Bay’s, did nothing to help the cause. A washed-up Larry Csonka took carries in the backfield from second-year quarterback “Off-Broadway” Joe Pisarcik. The only fans Pisarcik had in New York were the people who made crossword puzzles, but nevertheless he was in a feud with his offensive coordinator demanding more control over the offense. This was one of those all-too common situations in football where nobody was in the right. If you were a Bucs fan anxious for the first win, you had the Giants circled on the calendar. The only difference between the Bucs and the Giants was that the Giants had a past that they were failing to live up to.

It wasn’t to be, though the Buccaneers had plenty of opportunity, and the Giants wouldn’t have looked good playing against air. After an opening drive where quarterback Jeb Blount got knocked silly twice, a high snap evaded Tampa’s punter and gave the Giants the ball on the one-yard line, making scoring an easy matter for halfback Bobby Hammond. The Buccaneers special teams showed some life, returning the ensuing kickoff inside the 30, but the offense continued to disappoint, failing to convert a fourth and goal from the two, coming away empty-handed. The Bucs would have the ball on the right side of the Giants’ 35 yard line nine different times, but would still come away with no points. Despite Joe Pisarcik throwing for only eighty-eight yards, and the Giants having no play that went for more than thirty yards, the game was yet another loss, an ugly 10-0 march through swamp water. Jeb Blount was sacked six times and threw three picks, including one in the end zone. It was the fourth shutout of the Bucs out of an eventual six. The Giants didn’t look like world-beaters, but at least they could beat the Bucs, and at least they avoided the infamy of being the Bucs’ first victim. McVay said after the game, “In 25 years of coaching I've never had as much pressure on me as I did this week.”

McVay was right to feel pressure; when the Bucs did finally win, ending the year on their first ever winning streak, both their victims fired their coaches, with the Saints firing Hank Stram and the Cardinals letting go of Don Coryell. It was up to Bucs coach McKay to point out with his usual dark humor that the Bucs were now “only four plane crashes away” from the playoffs. They would be in the real thing in two years, only one game away from the Super Bowl. The Giants were still almost a decade away from their eventual glory. By the time they got there, NYC residents had wearily resigned themselves to a franchise in New Jersey using their name. In 1984, the Jets joined them as co-tenant with none of the uproar the Giants had sparked when they first moved across the river, and now teams across sports know that they can dictate to cities where their stadiums will be built instead of lining up for patronage with the other public goods. The Cowboys can build in Arlington, the 49ers can build in Santa Clara, and they can still keep their more glamorous city affiliations without even a light pushback from residents. It is true that people can get used to nearly anything. I do not know whether that is the key to our survival, or the cause of all the things we just barely survive, but it is undeniably true.