The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season was the team's first in the National Football League. The Buccaneers gained infamy as the first team to play an entire 14-game season without winning or tying a single game. They did not score until their third game and did not score a touchdown until their fourth. They lost by a touchdown or more eleven times. Colorful, maverick former USC coach John McKay, whose wisecracking remarks occasionally agitated fans and the league, led the team. Lee Roy Selmon, the Buccaneers' only Hall of Fame representative (as of 2009), made his rookie debut in an injury-plagued season.
The expansion draft was largely made up of aging veterans, giving the Buccaneers little basis for success. The lack of medical information provided on players in the expansion draft contributed heavily to the team's problems, as they finished the season with 17 players on injured reserve. They were last in the league in points scored, touchdowns, and rushing touchdowns. After a 19-point 4th-quarter performance brought them within striking distance of a victory in week 8 against the Kansas City Chiefs, they were blown out of every game the rest of the season. Subsequent expansion teams were given a more generous allotment of draft picks and expansion draft opportunities, in part to avoid a repeat of the Buccaneers' difficulties.
Read more about 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers Season: John McKay, Other Winless Teams, Offseason, Preseason, Regular Season, Standings, Scores By Quarter, Awards and Records
Famous quotes containing the words bay and/or season:
“Baltimore lay very near the immense protein factory of Chesapeake Bay, and out of the bay it ate divinely. I well recall the time when prime hard crabs of the channel species, blue in color, at least eight inches in length along the shell, and with snow-white meat almost as firm as soap, were hawked in Hollins Street of Summer mornings at ten cents a dozen.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.”
—William Harmon (b. 1938)