Name: Recalling Sam Wyche and Jerry Glanville's bloodthirsty feud
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Recalling Sam Wyche and Jerry Glanville's bloodthirsty feud

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Oct 29, 2020They went for it on fourth down leading 31-0. They recovered an onside kick leading 45-0 and kept on passing. They ran a fake reverse after that. With the score 58-7 in the final 30 seconds, Sam Wyche’s could have knelt on the ball. Instead, they drilled a 30-yard field goal to punctuate a 61-7 beatdown of Jerry Glanville’s Houston Oilers.Then, it got personal.Wyche unloaded on his hated rival in a postgame news conference for the ages.“In my 44 years of covering the NFL, I have never seen anything like it,” Houston Chronicle reporter John McClain said.Competitive people lose their tempers, but almost never does an NFL head coach hammer his counterpart with the kind of artillery Wyche pointed at Glanville on December 17, 1989 — the signature moment in one of the NFL’s great feuds. Wyche died in January, which means Glanville, 79 and fresh off a partial season as defensive coordinator for the XFL’s Tampa Bay Vipers, gets the last word. He’ll need a lot of them to dent the tank Wyche drove over him more than 30 years ago. The incident was emblematic of an era when coaches in the old AFC Central division — Chuck Noll and Marty Schottenheimer among them — came closer to brawling than fraternizing (stick around to hear what Schottenheimer was overheard saying about Glanville following a particularly satisfying victory).The inflammatory comments attributed to Wyche in his postgame media session after setting a franchise record for margin of victory included but were not limited to:“Jerry is an unusual coach. Drop me a note if you find somebody who likes this guy, will you?”“(Glanville) is an obnoxious ass.”“They are so obnoxious. That is the dumbest football team, the most undisciplined, stupid football team I think we’ve ever played.”“I feel sorry for the Houston players having to put up with him. He can take that hit-the-beach stuff and take it back to high school or wherever he got it from. He’s a joke.”“I wish there was a five-quarter game, because we would have loved to have jumped into that triple-digit thing.”“What did they get, seven points? Well, we let up.”Glanville, for his part, cleverly noted a few days after the game that he thought no less of Wyche, the implication being that he hadn’t thought much of him before the 61-7 outcome.We return to that day in 1989 when Wyche went where no other NFL coach has gone, before or since.(Note: Titles refer to the positions held by each person at the time of the game.)Glanville headed straight for the locker room after the game. Wyche went toward midfield, saw Glanville jogging off and waved to him. “Bye-bye, Jerry,” Wyche mouthed. Newsday reported that Wyche, who had been fined a week earlier for barring reporters from the locker room following a tough defeat to Seattle in the infamous “you don’t live in Cleveland” game, was so eager to talk about the Houston game that he personally pulled media members into what became a packed news conference with an estimated 50 reporters in attendance.John McClain (Houston Chronicle reporter): Afterward, back when media could still be on the sideline at the end of the game, I remember walking behind Mike Munchak, Bruce Matthews and Dean Steinkuhler, the Oilers’ three best offensive linemen. Sam was following them toward their dressing room screaming, “How can you play for that phony son of a bitch?!” And then I remember one of our columnists, Ed Fowler, went to the Bengals’ dressing room before he went to the Oilers’. Several media people did because you’ve never seen anybody run up a score like that, just to rub somebody’s face in it. And Sam just ripped the hell out of Glanville.Jack Brennan (Cincinnati Enquirer): I don’t think one NFL coach has ever blasted the other head coach at the postgame news conference anywhere even in the same remote ballpark as what Sam did with Jerry. Our jaws just dropped and we were wide-eyed.Anthony Munoz (Bengals tackle, pictured below, at right, with teammate Max Montoya at the Pro Bowl): Bruce Matthews and I played at USC together. I played with his brother Clay. So after that year, we get to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl. I’ve known Bruce forever. Him and Munchak and a couple guys are sitting at a table and I just don’t think anything of it. I see them, walk over and both Bruce and Munchak at the same time look at me and go, “You idiot.” And I’m like, “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” The field goal. I said, “Hey, guys, tell me if your coach told you to do something in a game, you’re not going to do it?” They go, “We know, but you’re still an idiot.”Solomon Wilcots (Bengals safety): I think we were winning 31-0 at halftime and Sam just blasted us. Man, he said if we don’t score another 30 points in the second half, he threatened us. We were like, “What the hell?”Warren Moon (Oilers quarterback): Jerry antagonized a lot of coaches. Sam just seemed to be the one that Jerry could get under his skin more.Wilcots: Sam did not act like that all the time. He was a Bill Walsh disciple. Between him and (defensive coordinator) Dick LeBeau and (offensive coordinator) Bruce Coslet, we prided ourselves on being a smart team.Jim McNally (Bengals offensive line coach): Sam was a nice guy, but if he got pissed, if you pulled Sam’s trigger, he went off. When we were in Cincinnati and they were throwing snowballs (in the Seattle game a week earlier), I mean, Sam ran over and grabbed the mic and said, “You’re not in Cleveland, you’re in Cincinnati. Knock it off.” He didn’t hesitate.Bruce Kozerski (Bengals center): The underlying sentiment was that Sam and Jerry did not get along at all. Sam played for Jerry way back in the day and it was stated that Sam had seen Jerry tape $100 bills to the board to take out opposing quarterbacks. He had seen Jerry do things that were unethical. Sam really didn’t like Jerry at all.Glanville: Our deal was, we were never trying to tackle you. We were trying to run right through you. If we got a run-through tackle, I would back it up on the film five or six times, but I never gave anybody a dollar. We didn’t do that.Wilcots: We all respected Chuck Noll. I don’t know that we had the same feeling for Glanville because they did play dirty. They had a guy who would run down on kickoff and they would literally try to maim you at the bottom of the pile, rip your helmet off and then they would throw your helmet up as they were all running off the field. I guess they thought that meant toughness.Glanville: My deal was, if you get a penalty, get it on first down. You get it on third down, you make us stay out there. We were playing the in Indianapolis. Remember Eric Dickerson? They run a toss sweep and he is running out of bounds by me. I step by and he runs past me. Jeff Donaldson is our safety. Now Eric Dickerson is against the wall where the fans are, in rows 1, 2, 3, and Donaldson hits him, turns him upside down. Flags fly. Crowd boos. I grabbed Donaldson and said, “What the hell are you doing?” He says, “Coach, it was first-and-10. You told me never have a penalty on third-and-long, so I didn’t think this one would bother us.”Moon: Jerry wanted to be the tough guy. He wanted to change our colors from Columbia blue to black. He wore black. He wore that big belt buckle. He wore duster coats and rode around on his Harley. I didn’t like it at all because it brought more attention to our offense from the other team’s defense. It made it much more difficult for us to play on the road because he had antagonized not only the team with bulletin-board material, but also the fans wherever we were going to play.Glanville: I had the owner of the , the owner of the tell me, “Jerry, you’ll never be out of work because when you show up, even on the road, you put a butt in every fricking chair — they will all come to boo you.” When we walked out of the dugout in Cleveland, our two receivers, Michael Haynes and Andre Rison, I would follow them out. When they stepped out of the dugout, 86,000 people would stand and boo. Well, that is fantastic.Moon: Whenever we got to that opposing stadium, I felt like a piece of meat going into the Colosseum in Rome.Kozerski: Jerry is a very boastful guy and as the teams played twice a year, it heated up and they beat us once pretty good (41-6 in 1988, when the Bengals reached the Super Bowl) and I think Jerry did something that Sam really, really did not like. It might have been a score late in the game, a pass late in the game that was uncalled for.Glanville: It was kind of funny, when we beat them so bad in Houston, 41-whatever, the game plan was, “Warren Moon, if you ever see them in this certain look, check to this and throw this touchdown.” Well, we’re ahead (34-6), he sees it, we throw a touchdown. Sam probably thinks I called the play. I’m calling 23 Lead, we are trying to end the game, but Warren is doing exactly what he was coached to do. It was an audible. I should have thrown out the checks and told Warren to run the ball no matter what. But there is the look that we practiced, they show it and Warren goes, “Go, go!” Touchdown. And I go, “Oh, shit.”Kozerski: Sam did not think twice about going for another score or calling the onside kick to make another point when he had the upper hand on Jerry.Munoz: We got ahead 58-7, there are seconds left and I’m ready to genuflect, and all of a sudden, there is a timeout. And we as linemen look at each other and go, “What is that for?” We see our kicker, Jim Breech, running onto the field and we are like, “No, this cannot be happening.”Wilcots: We even felt kind of like, “OK, what are we doing? This is ridiculous.” We knew it was personal for Sam. He had already threatened us.Munoz: The holder gets in the huddle and says, “Field goal.” We break the huddle and are going to the line of scrimmage and the Oilers are just looking at us like, “What are you guys doing?”Don Criqui (NBC play-by-play, on the broadcast): They are going to kick a field goal leading 58-7 with 25 seconds to play. Jerry Glanville and Sam Wyche, the adversaries. Wyche, the coach of the Bengals, with his team leading 58-7. Glanville, as the Bengals set up for a field goal try to get even more before the final gun. Glanville calls a timeout.Glanville: It’s funny, as they came up, (Oilers defensive back) Tracey Eaton called timeout on our side and he warned Cincinnati, “You guys better think about this play because this is going to be one hell of a play. You’d better go tell Sam.” So they went over to talk to Sam and Sam said to kick it. Well, we came with an 11-man rush, unbelievable rush, knocked over every offensive lineman, they put the ball down and kicked it and it went right through the goalposts, game over.McClain: You get beat like that and there is not much you can say. That was one of the few times I ever saw Jerry quiet after a game. Sam did enough talking for both of them. I have never seen anything like it and I certainly have never seen an opposing coach go off the field screaming at two Hall of Famers, “How can you stand to play for a phony SOB like that?!”Glanville: When I got back to Houston, I only showed one play (in film review). I showed the last play where they were ahead by 60 and what people don’t realize is, we went to the playoffs and Sam didn’t. Doug Smith, my defensive tackle, sent Sam two tickets to the playoffs because he said it’s the only way you’ll get in. You can’t make this stuff up.Munoz: Some of what added to that whole thing with those two was literally we had to be on our toes during the game because quite frankly, that defense was a little over the edge at the end of plays, directed by Glanville. We weren’t just going to stand around. We were going to initiate. I think Sam wasn’t crazy about that.McClain: Jerry was really unpopular in the AFC Central, beginning with Chuck Noll grabbing his hand after a game (in 1987, as pictured below). The Oilers won in the dome and Chuck grabbed his hand and wouldn’t let go and scolded him with his left hand and pointed his thumb at him about teaching his players to hold running backs and receivers up, and then come in at the ribs.Glanville: Chuck Noll goes, “Jerry, they are coming over the top. They are hitting us from everywhere.” I said, “Yes sir, we ask them to do that.” He goes, “You got a problem, it’s going to be your ass.” I said, “What’s the problem?” He said, “You gotta come to my place.” And I said, “Well, look at the calendar, we are going to show up.” Do you realize we went into his place and it was the worst ass-kicking we ever gave them (34-14 at Pittsburgh in 1988)? I loved making guys crack. We got to crack Marty, we got to crack Chuck, we got to crack Sam. You can’t beat that! There will never be anything like that in the NFL again.McClain: That division, Noll didn’t like Glanville, Wyche didn’t like him and Schottenheimer didn’t either. I will tell you a great Marty story. They beat the Oilers and after the game, I had written half of what I was writing. I had to go to the bathroom behind the press box and somebody was on the toilet and Marty was taking a leak. And Marty wasn’t paying attention to me. I was taking a leak next to him and he goes, “Ahhh, I love beating that son of a bitch.” He was telling the guy on the toilet, whoever it was. I didn’t wait to see who it was.Glanville: They have Marty on film. They beat us last game of the (1988) season before we played them again in the playoffs. In the AFC Central in those days, no coach shook hands with any other coach when the game was over. They have a picture of Marty walking off the field. He goes, “Well, that’s an ass-kicking for you, Glanville. You can shove it up your ass in six days.” He’s hollering that! Six days later, we beat ’em. That’s Hollywood. You can’t write these scripts. I still drive race cars, you know. I’d like to get Sam and old Chuck and Marty in a race car. Would I drive right over the top of them.Munoz: So we win the game 61-7. Fast-forward a few years. I retire and I get hired by Fox. They get the NFL from CBS. We have our offseason meetings out in Marina Del Rey. Jerry Glanville is another guy they hired. I used to get up every morning and jog about 6 miles, and one morning, I get up and Jerry is getting ready to jog and he says, “Hey, do you mind if we jog together?” And I’m thinking, “This should be fun.” He proceeds to tell me, and I don’t know if it’s true, that he coached Sam and he cut Sam and he started telling me about all these guys that were upset with him because he drafted them and he cut them. Supposedly, that is why Sam was upset.Glanville: What people don’t know is in Detroit, I coached Sam (as special-teams coach and defensive assistant in the mid-1970s). This is where it all started.Wyche (to reporters in 1989): I don’t care for Jerry Glanville. I haven’t since I was a player and he was a coach on the same team. But I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have just let the 61 points shut him up. Now I’ve started something I can’t shut up. I’m looking like the bad guy in this thing. Honesty gets me into trouble sometimes.Glanville: Sam was our holder and third quarterback in Detroit. We lost two quarterbacks, good players, Bill Munson and Greg Landry. We are playing the and we had to play Sam. Well, Sam didn’t play very good, played terrible, and our owner came down and said, “If you ever play him again, you’re fricking out of work.”So, we got “Singing” from the , Mississippi State guy. Great voice. Sang the national anthem. Well, I do my research, Joe Reed was also the holder on field goals. So during practice I said, “When practice is all over, Joe, come on down near the end zone with me and I’ll watch you hold for field goals.” Well, Sam got ruffled up. He goes, “If he holds, I’m never holding again.” I told him, “Well, guess what? You don’t have to worry about it, you’re never playing again, I’m cutting your ass right now!” That was the end of that relationship.Glanville might have told a tale or two in his nearly eight decades on this planet, but his recounting meshes with what he told Munoz during that jog in Marina Del Rey more than 25 years ago. Old newspaper reports confirm Munson was injured against Washington in the 1975 preseason, Wyche played in that game and the released Wyche a few days later. Reed was already on the team, having been acquired in 1974. Whatever the finer details might have been, Wyche confirmed his feud with Glanville originated in Detroit. As much as we would love to include a fresh perspective from Wyche, there are unfortunately no fifth quarters in life, as in football. But the legend of December 17, 1989, shall endure.(Top photo: NFL Films’ “Cincinnati Bengals 1989: Unfinished Business”)

Oct 29, 2020They went for it on fourth down leading 31-0. They recovered an onside kick leading 45-0 and kept on passing. They ran a fake reverse after that. With the score 58-7 in the final 30 seconds, Sam Wyche’s could have knelt on the ball. Instead, they drilled a 30-yard field goal to punctuate a 61-7 beatdown of Jerry Glanville’s Houston Oilers.Then, it got personal.Wyche unloaded on his hated rival in a postgame news conference for the ages.“In my 44 years of covering the NFL, I have never seen anything like it,” Houston Chronicle reporter John McClain said.Competitive people lose...

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Recalling Sam Wyche and Jerry Glanville's bloodthirsty feud

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