Former Buccaneer head coach Ray Perkins by Denis Crawford Ray Perkins still has the voice. The slight Southern accent with a hint of drill sergeant voice. The Strother Martin “Cool Hand Luke” voice. You know the one: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” That is the Ray Perkins voice. It is the no-nonsense voice of a man who has spent his entire career teaching the sport of football to both collegiate school boys and grizzled pros. It is the voice of a man who was a disciple of Paul “Bear” Bryant and a teammate of Johnny Unitas. It is the voice of a man who is at peace. Ray Perkins was the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1987 to 1990 and during his tenure he was characterized with contradictory adjectives by players, fans and the media. Perkins was seen as aloof and warm, strict and fair, creative offensively and too offensively conservative. A man who engendered controversy just by doing his job, Perkins was kind enough to share some thoughts on his Tampa Bay career recently with BUCPOWER.COM. Living in semi-retirement in his native Mississippi, Perkins stills sounds as if he could command a squad full of players on the day of a game. With polite, yet pointed responses, Perkins provided insight into his hiring as coach, his football philosophy and the emotions he still feels to this day about his time in Tampa Bay. Perkins enjoyed a successful collegiate career at Alabama in the 1960’s. A wide receiver, Perkins caught passes from Joe Namath and achieved All-American honors in addition to being part of two national championship teams under Paul “Bear” Bryant. As a professional, Perkins spent five years in Baltimore playing with Johnny Unitas. In fact, Perkins caught a key 68-yard touchdown pass from Untias that helped propel the Colts to a 27-17 victory over Oakland in the AFC title game on the way to a Super Bowl championship in 1970. As a coach, Perkins was the offensive coordinator for the “Air Coryell” San Diego Chargers of the late 1970’s. After overseeing the 1970’s version of the “Greatest Show on Turf,” Perkins was offered the chance to become head coach of the New York Giants in 1979. At the time the Giants were a laughingstock, coming off six straight losing seasons. In a matter of two years Perkins turned the Giants around, leading them to their first playoff appearance in almost 20 years. One of his signature wins was a 17-14 defeat of then undefeated Tampa Bay in 1979. Perkins was the head coach at the University of Alabama when Hugh Culverhouse came calling in late December 1986. Culverhouse had just fired Leeman Bennett and was so enamored with Perkins, he didn’t interview any other candidates. According to Perkins, it was Culverhouse that came to him with a request to interview. “He (Culverhouse) had called and the way I remember it he had called and asked to interview,” Perkins said. “To be honest I don’t remember exactly how we got together, but at any rate we agreed. We agreed to an interview in a Birmingham hotel.” Perkins and Culverhouse met, broke off for the night and met again the next day for breakfast and further meetings. By the end of the second day, Hugh Culverhouse offered Perkins the Bucs job and the Tide coach accepted. “He made me a real good offer and when I let my president know that, there was no action one way or the other to try and make any kind of counteroffer to keep me at Alabama.” Perkins did want to clarify that he did not have the total football control that some surmised. “I was the head coach period, that was the job I took,” he said. “I was involved in all the trades and drafts. I was actively involved in all of that.” However, Perkins points out that he did not have the final say on all football matters. That rested with the owner. “There was a delegation of duties. (Phil) Krueger was the contract guy, bean counter if you will for Mr. Culverhouse. If it was something kind of big it would go through Krueger to Mr. Culverhouse to get the final okay.” The first draft of the Perkins era presented the Buccaneers coach with more than 20 picks with which to make his mark on the team. According to Perkins, he approached his first Buccaneer draft with the same philosophy he had acquired throughout his coaching career. “My basic philosophy is the philosophy of a lot of different people,” Perkins explained. “I don’t think you get very far without a quarterback and I don’t think you can go very far without a defense. Those are the two places that I like to start when looking at a team overall to eventually take it where you like to take it.” In the 1987 draft Perkins focused on both sides of the ball. On defense he brought in key contributors Ricky Reynolds, Winston Moss and Curt Jarvis. On offense, Mark Carrier, Ron Hall and Bruce Hill were all drafted and became very productive receivers. As for who would throw them the ball, Perkins made the decision that would define his career in Tampa Bay. Instead of keeping Steve Young, Perkins and the Bucs elected to trade the raw but promising Southpaw to San Francisco and draft Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Vinny Testaverde out of Miami. “It was a matter of us feeling strongly enough about Vinny Testaverde to pick him where we picked him,” Perkins explained. “If you are going to pick a quarterback where we picked Testaverde, you are pretty much saying he is going to be your quarterback. So that left Steve Young and Steve DeBerg as the back-ups. One of them is going to be a back-up and which one are you going to get the most for in a trade? "You kind of put them out there and feel around. San Francisco wanted Steve Young so that is the route we went. This is where Phil Krueger, Mr. Culverhouse and myself were all involved in that particular trade. We talked about it.” With a batch of young players, Perkins next set out to separate the wheat from the chaff by organizing what has become an infamous training camp. The Buccaneers were coming off back-to-back 2-14 seasons in 1987 and Perkins felt the talent level was not up to caliber. In an attempt to discover which of the Bennett-era holdovers and his acquisitions were going to be football players, Perkins knew he needed to get as much practice time in as possible. As a result, Perkins instituted a three-a- day schedule to maximize the amount of time on the field. “It was a concept that I had used in college at Alabama,” Perkins said when asked to describe the philosophy behind the three-a-days. “What it is, your first practice is early in the morning at 8:30 and all you do is work on special teams. Then you go out with another practice before lunch and you work on certain aspects of your offense and defense. Then you go out like at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and you work on other aspects of your offense and defense.” “In other words,” the coach continued, “you have basically one special teams practice in the morning and two offensive and defensive practices before lunch and in the afternoon. But from a time standpoint, time spent and plays run, you are really not running any more plays and spending any more time on the field. It’s just a matter of how you are splitting it up and the fact you are going out three different times.” The three-a-days led to a misperception about Perkins. A stern disciplinarian, his practices would wear his players out. Working out three times a day in the heat and humidity of a Tampa Bay summer was just asking for trouble. Perkins heard those opinions, but felt they were uninformed because they didn’t take into account that his players didn’t have to go as long over three sessions as some teams did in two. “I think it helps take care of the players because they are out there for shorter periods of time,” Perkins said. “Back then it wasn’t anything for a lot of teams to be on the field two hours, two and a half hours. But we were always off the field in an hour and a half.” “It helped us get in practices like the one before noon,” Perkins continued, stating that the schedule also helped eliminate lost practice time due to the daily violent thunderstorms endemic to Tampa Bay summers. “You get to work on some offense and defense where later in the afternoon in Tampa there are several times where you get rained out, because that time of year in Tampa there is almost always a rain shower.” The practice appeared to pay off as the Bucs overwhelmed the Atlanta Falcons 48-10 in the season opener. But just as quickly as the Bucs started, the season came to a screeching halt before Week 3 when the NFL Players Association walked out on strike and Perkins was left to coach a collection of replacement players. “Not fun,” Perkins said bluntly when asked what it was like to go from coaching his players to a team of replacements. “I’m not sure I can explain what it was like. It wasn’t a lot of fun I can tell you that.” “I resented it,” he said. “I look at the NFL, I look at college, I look at the game of football as a great, great opportunity for any young man. I know that it is a livelihood of a lot of people when you get to the pros. I understand that and have an appreciation for that too. But to go on strike? This happened to me in New York as well. I resented the players for actually going on strike because this is their game, this is our game, this is the fans game. I took it kind of personal.” While he may have been angry, Perkins arguably did the best coaching of his Buccaneer career while the B-Bucs were on the field. The replacement team went 2- 1 and had Tampa Bay in position for first place in the NFC Central when the strike ended. When asked what the secret was to performing so well when many other franchises flopped during replacement ball, Perkins verbally shrugged and commented it was just his job. “What else could we do?” Perkins asked rhetorically. “We didn’t have a choice, we had games on the schedule. So we got whatever players that we can gather up and put on the field. Let’s work at it and practice and prepare and try to win the games we got. That’s our job. That’s our job as coaches and our jobs as players.” When the regular players did come back they showed an alarming inability to keep a lead. In the first game back, the Bucs squandered a 20 point lead in a 27-26 loss to Chicago. The next week, Tampa Bay nearly blew another 20 point lead, hanging on for a narrow 23-17 victory at Green Bay. Then came the infamous 4th quarter collapse against St. Louis. Leading 28-3 heading into the final stanza, the Bucs lead evaporated and they headed home with a 31-28 defeat. That game led to the standard joke: “What is a Buc Worth?” The answer: “Three Quarters.” An inability to hold a lead would mark almost all of Perkins’ Buccaneer teams. Many argue that the Bucs constantly fielded young teams during his tenure as a way to keep personnel costs down and that led to a lack of continuity. When that subject was broached with Perkins, he quickly and bluntly laid it to rest. “I don’t want to chalk anything up to anything except I didn’t get the job done,” Perkins said matter of factly. “I’m not blaming anybody. We had a lot of good players. Am I saying we had enough good players? Probably not, but we had a lot of good players and we had a lot of good players that gave everything they had and were dedicated people. We had some really great coaches in my mind. I just didn’t get the job done. Period.” Following records of 4-11 and 5-11 in 1987 and 1988 respectively, the Bucs burst out of the gates in 1989 defeating Green Bay, New Orleans and Chicago while narrowly missing out on a defeat of the defending Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers. The early season promise once again petered out with frustrating come-from-ahead losses to Detroit, Washington and Green Bay. In 1990 it was a sickening case of deja-vu as the Bucs started off 3-2 and then collapsed against Dallas. That Cowboy loss totally deflated the team and its fan base. Before a Week 13 match-up with the Atlanta Falcons, Buccaneer fans staged a mass walk-out as a way to get the point across to Hugh Culverhouse that the time had come to “Jerk the Perk,” as many signs in Tampa Stadium read. Despite the Bucs 23-17 victory on Sunday, Perkins was indeed dismissed Monday. However, according to Perkins he wasn’t fired because of the fan protest. The former coach says he was terminated because of a refusal to make scapegoats out of his assistants. “He gave me the ultimatum of firing four coaches or I would be fired,” Perkins said. The coach disagreed, refused to fire his assistants and in turn was dismissed. Given the manner in which he left Tampa Bay, one would believe Perkins would be justified to be bitter about his Tampa experience but the ex-coach says nothing could be further from the truth. When it comes to Mr. Culverhouse, Ray Perkins remains a fan of his, although he candidly admits the owners should have stayed out of football decisions. “He was a great man. I really liked him a lot. He was a really fine businessman, but a football man he was not.” As for the fans of Tampa Bay, Perkins holds no grudge over the public protest against his continued employment. “I appreciated the great opportunity that Hugh Culverhouse gave me with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I have nothing but fond memories of the city of Tampa and living there. My only regret is that I didn’t do a better job then what I did. I was the guy that was hired to do the job and I didn’t get the job done. Period.” “I’ve always believed deep down in my heart that it is not us as coaches and it is not us as players that make the game, but rather the fan,” Perkins said. “If it weren’t for the fans there would be no league. There would be no coaches, there would be no players. So I have a great deal of respect for the people that follow our great game of football and spend so many thousands and thousands of dollars in doing so. I have a great appreciation of the fans.” After leaving Tampa Bay, Perkins was briefly the head coach at Arkansas State before hooking up with a former protégé. Perkins had helped Bill Parcells land his first NFL job with New England before hiring him as his Giants defensive coach. When Perkins left for Bama, Parcells succeeded him as Giants coach and has never looked back. “He was a great coach, a great coordinator and I have nothing but a great deal of respect for him and he is a great friend today.” Perkins said of Parcells who hired his former mentor as offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots. The combo of Parcells and Perkins helped the Patriots end their sad sack ways and culminated in an appearance in Super Bowl XXXI against Green Bay. When Parcells retired, Perkins moved on to the Oakland Raiders and Cleveland Browns before ultimately hanging up the coaching whistle for good. Perkins still follows the game in Mississippi, but admits he is not much of a fan. “I have always said that I would not be a very good fan,” he continued. “I said when I quit coaching I would not be a very good fan and you know what? I’m not. Even now after being retired, I have a greater appreciation for fans then I had before that. The game did so much for me and my life that it was my life.” But now, football, including his time in Tampa Bay, is just something Perkins did and is no longer who he is.