Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Steve Spurrier knows the heartbreak of a winless NFL season

Published Dec. 16, 2016 1:21 p.m. ET

Sam Gardner

The Cleveland Browns are 0-13 with three games left to play in the 2016 season, but as the league’s worst team prepares to visit the Buffalo Bills Sunday, there’s an argument to be made that going 0-for-the-year can have its perks.

After all, one of the most iconic coaches in college football history may have never gotten into the profession at all if not for his own winless campaign as an NFL player.

Longtime Florida head coach Steve Spurrier went 0-14 as the starting quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during their expansion season in 1976. The Bucs’ inaugural effort was part of an 0-26 slide to kick off the franchise’s existence, but according to the Old Ball Coach, it was his experience with that team that inspired him to get into coaching in the first place.

“I had no desire to be a coach prior to that year, but after going 0-14, I said, ‘If I get a chance to be a coach, I think I’ve got a chance to be successful,’” Spurrier told FOX Sports by phone on Friday. “So I look at it as a blessing.”

Particularly, Spurrier said his lone season with the Bucs, who acquired Spurrier in an April 1976 trade, taught him how to be creative and flexible with his play-calling -- a hallmark of his SEC and national championship teams at Florida in the 1990s.

“Our plays were designed for a team with outstanding talent,” Spurrier said of the ‘76 Bucs. “(Head coach) John McKay came from Southern Cal, where he won four national championships, and the players he had there were generally a whole bunch of All-Americans and first-round NFL picks and so forth. So his teams were loaded. But we just couldn’t run the toss sweep and the power plays, those I-formation plays that they romped up and down the field with in college.

“So I sort of thought maybe if I became a coach, I could find some new plays that maybe give your players a chance to be successful,” continued Spurrier, who also coached at Duke and South Carolina, in addition to a two-year stint with the Washington Redskins. “That’s what you have to do. You have to create something if your players are not quite capable.”

By the time Spurrier was dealt to Tampa, he’d already spent nine seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, mostly as a backup to Niners lifer John Brodie. But while some veterans might bristle at the prospect of playing for an expansion team, Spurrier said he was excited to finally have the opportunity to start. To do so within a couple hours of his offseason home in Gainesville, where he won the 1966 Heisman Trophy as a senior at Florida, was a bonus.

“I was thrilled about it,” said Spurrier, who also served as the 49ers’ punter for several seasons during his time in the Bay Area. “It was a chance to come back home.”

The happy homecoming was short-lived, however, as the ’76 Bucs were shut out in each of their first two games -- two of five total shutouts on the year -- and didn’t score an offensive touchdown until the fourth quarter of their fourth game. Tampa Bay didn’t end up scoring two offensive touchdowns in a game until Week 7 and didn’t score more than 20 points in a single game all season.

“John McKay, one of his famous lines, they asked him after a game about the execution of his offensive line, and he said, ‘Well, right now, I’d probably be in favor of it,’” Spurrier recalled with a laugh. “That was one of his corny jokes. He was pretty good at it too.”

Overall, Spurrier’s Bucs averaged just 215 yards of offense per outing, and their 8.9 points per game are still the third-fewest by any team since the AFL-NFL merger. (The record, as it happens, is 7.4, and belongs to the 1977 Bucs, who were shut out six times, another NFL record.) But Spurrier said the mood in the locker room remained generally positive, even as the team struggled.

“Our situation was so much different than the Detroit team that went 0-16 (in 2008) and Cleveland,” Spurrier said. “Because we maybe hoped to win a couple games, two or three, and that would have been a very good season for the expansion team.

“So there was pretty good camaraderie among a lot of the guys,” continued Spurrier, who threw for 1,628 yards, seven touchdowns, with 12 interceptions across 12 starts in 1976. “It wasn’t as depressing, I don’t think, as maybe the teams that have been in existence for a long time, like Detroit and Cleveland. And we should have won a couple, but it just didn’t work out.”

Of the Bucs’ 14 losses, three came by a touchdown or less, including a 14-9 loss to Buffalo that saw Tampa blow a fourth-quarter lead and a 13-10 loss to Seattle that saw the Seahawks block a potential game-tying field goal with 42 seconds to play. In the third, the Miami Dolphins escaped with a 23-20 win thanks to a game-winning field goal with 55 seconds left in regulation.

But while some might have seen the close calls as signs of progress, Spurrier didn’t read too much into their significance.

“I don’t know how much optimism we had, but we got ready to play,” Spurrier said. “And since not much was expected, maybe the losses didn’t hurt as badly as they would be if you were expected to win. Later, though, as a coach, I learned that if your expectations are not good, then your team’s probably not going to be very good either. So you’ve got to get your expectations high if you want a chance to get there.”

Unfortunately, there may not be much hope left for the Browns, who haven’t scored more than 13 points in a game since October. But they’ve got at least one person pulling for them in Spurrier -- a legend who knows all too well the heartache that comes with being on the wrong side of history.

“For 32 years, we had the record until Detroit went 0-16 so they broke it,” said Spurrier, who was released prior to the 1977 season and did not appear in another regular-season NFL game. “People ask, ‘Were you hoping that they’d break your record?’ and I said, ‘No, I wanted to have the losingest team in NFL history.’ It gave me some excellent speaking material.

“But I don’t wish Cleveland to go winless,” Spurrier continued. “I hope they win a game here out of the next three. … Because I think they’ve got a decent team. They’re close, it seems like, for a half or so, and it doesn’t seem like they’re getting clobbered all the time. They just can’t win.”

You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GurGX3wMHFA