The 1979 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season was the team's fourth in the National Football League. After having won just seven games in the previous three seasons combined, the 1979 Buccaneers won ten games, finished as NFC Central division champions, and won the first playoff game in franchise history.
The Buccaneers added offensive threats to complement their solid defense; a healthy Doug Williams played his first full season and Ricky Bell became the team's first 1,000-yard back, rushing for a career-high 1,263 yards.
The 1979 team not only posted their first winning record, but earned a playoff spot by winning the NFC Central division title. The playoff spot was secured in the final week in a rain-sodden game against the Kansas City Chiefs, with the only score being a 19-yard field goal by Neil O'Donoghue. They then recorded their first-ever playoff win by defeating the Philadelphia Eagles behind Bell's 142 yards rushing. Tampa Bay hosted the 1979 NFC Championship Game the following week, but lost 9–0 to the Los Angeles Rams.
Read more about 1979 Tampa Bay Buccaneers Season: 1979 Roster, Coaching Staff, Regular Season, Awards and Honors
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)
“Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are important, like the town clock. A village that has them not will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is wanting.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)