January 21, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, African Americans could be running backs, wide receivers, linebackers...but in the eyes of many coaches and team owners not quarterbacks—that was a "thinking man's" position. John Eisenberg, author of Rocketmen: The Black Quarterbacks Who Revolutionized Pro Football tells the story of how Doug Williams—put that racist notion to rest once and for all in 1989 with the Redskin's victory over the Elway-led Denver Broncos.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. In twenty twenty,
Patrick Mahomes signed what was then the largest contract in
sports history, a ten year, four hundred and fifty million
dollar extension right after his first Super Bowl victory in
nineteen ninety. Doug Williams of the Washington Redskins would be
paid one million dollars or about two million adjusted for
(00:33):
inflation after winning the nineteen eighty nine Super Bowl against
the John Elway led Denver Broncos, a huge feat not
just because the Broncos were favored, but because Doug Williams
would become the first black quarterback to lift the Lombardi Trophy.
Here to tell the story of how black men being
an NFL quarterback went from being a laughable idea to
(00:56):
the heights of sports success is John Eisen, author of Rocketman,
The Black Quarterbacks who Revolutionized Pro Football. Take it away, John.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Quarterback in the NFL is probably the most prominent position
in all of sports.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
The quarterback has been football's center of attention.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Everybody wants to be the quarterback, whether it be in
business or whether it.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
Be in sports.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
They want to be the guy that makes the decisions.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
Did he lead his team in the victory.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
That's what the quarterback.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
He's a general, he's a general author.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
This glamorous occupation requires part leadership, part charisma. There's fame
and fortune for those who master it. And in all
of sports, there isn't another position quite like NFL quarterback.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
The early days of football, the quarterback was not important.
The game was just sort of a scrum, a muddy scrum.
Most of plays involved just a back plunging into the line,
which was just a tangle of arms and legs and
really people just wrestling there at the line of scrimmage.
Not much happened. Hunting was a much bigger deal than passing.
(02:13):
There was very little scoring. It wouldn't be surprising to
see a game with the final score of six to
two safety and a touchdown and a missed extra point.
It wasn't very exciting. That all changed As football evolved
and became more sophisticated and the forward pass became a
big part of the game. Coaches said, hey, we can
(02:35):
move the ball in chunks, large chunks throwing it instead
of small chunks running it, and so that brought the
quarterback front and center into football. And then lights of
television came on, and suddenly these games were on in
living rooms across America. The quarterback had the ball in
his hands. He was throwing the ball, and it was
so dramatic. At sudden point.
Speaker 7 (02:56):
The quarterback touches the ball every part they have the
most to do whether we win or lose.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
If you have a guy that can play successfully at quarterback,
you have a chance to win half your games, just about,
no matter what happens.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
In a lot of other areas, without a quarterback, you
got a chance to win maybe one and nothing.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
I think it's the most dramatic position in the game
for losing the game.
Speaker 8 (03:17):
Shotgun left lift seventy eighty two drive v Why.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
That did it again?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
By the seventies, this position is glamorous, high paid. You
are so important that if you're the quarterback of a team,
you're really the face of the team. Whoever your quarterback was,
that said a lot about who your team was, what
you were like, and that never changed. I mean it's
even more the case now.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
This celebrity status sells tickets and insures the highest salaries
in pro football. No other player is held in such
a steam by the public, and no other position poses
such an enormous challenge.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
But there were almost no blacks at that position for
the majority of the history of the NFL. In the
first years of the NFL, they did not bar black players,
but there were very few, but the fact that there
were some was noteworthy. If the NFL had had a
(04:22):
Most Valuable Player award in its first season in nineteen twenty,
they didn't. If they'd had one would have been won
by Fritz Pollard. And he was a darting runner, a
kick returner. He kicked, he punted, he did all sorts
of things, played defense, of course, and he played for
a team in Akron, Ohio, the Akron Pros, and they
(04:43):
won the championship, all the while dealing with unbelievable racism
from fans in Akron and wherever the Akron Pros went
to play. He lines up a quarterback in a game.
By then he's playing for a different team and Hammond,
Indiana Hammond Pros long relegated to the dust bin of history.
(05:04):
But he lines up a quarterback. It's in a box score,
you can see it. And that's the first time that
a black player played quarterback in the NFL. It was
in nineteen twenty three. It was Fritz Pollard. There were
a few other black players in the league in the
nineteen twenties that just weren't many of them. And then
nineteen thirty three the word has come down, no more
(05:26):
black players. It was never written, as far as anyone
can tell, but it was an agreement. It held in
place into the late nineteen forties. No black players in
the NFL. I don't think the NFL had any intention
of reintegrating. It all happened sort of by a chance.
The Rams were in Cleveland for the first to nine
(05:48):
years of their existence, and they moved to Los Angeles,
and they're going to play a memorial Colisee in which
is still there, was built with taxpayer money for the Olympics,
the nineteen thirty two Olympics, and is governed by a
public commission, and so had a commission hearing after the
Rams moved, and they wanted a lease. Three horse riders
(06:08):
are from black newspapers attended the commission meeting and said,
you can't have this. We can't have taxpayer money supporting
a lease for a team in a segregated league. Black
taxpayers spent just as much as white tax players, and
the members of the Commission immediately said this is a problem.
You're right. So the RAMS had to integrate. They weren't
(06:30):
going to get a lease otherwise. So what happened to
the Rams started a process of teams in the rest
of the league, ever so slowly starting to bring in
black players, but a quarterback.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
That position of quarterback became very, very protected.
Speaker 9 (06:49):
We could run a ball, we could tackle, but to think,
to strategize that was supposed to be for others.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
The coaches, they said, well, we'll take a black player
as a running back. We'll take a black player as
a wide receiver. Those are more athletic positions. You don't
have to think as much. Quarterback is a thinking position.
You have to call the signals, run the offense, really
be a coach on the field.
Speaker 10 (07:13):
We said that we didn't have the mental capabilities to
be able to remember the plays.
Speaker 11 (07:19):
That was you know, certainly the perception, you know, how
can he play quarterback?
Speaker 5 (07:24):
They're not smart enough? And that's ridiculous. A.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Was he smart enough? D? Was he enough of a leader? C?
Can he come through in the clutch? D? Will white
teammates respond to it? And that white decision making apparatus
did not trust a black athlete in that position, and
(07:48):
then less obvious but certainly true. If indeed your quarterbacks
the face of your franchise, they didn't want that face
to be black. Period. The agent Lee Steinberg, famous agent,
told me NFL owners want their quarterback to be a
guy they can take to the country club, take on
their boats, and they are much more comfortable with someone
(08:11):
who looks like them. Any good black player coming out
of college, black quarterback has to play another position, or
they go play in the Canadian Football League where there's
less racism.
Speaker 12 (08:22):
You really to understand this, you have to understand America
after World War Two, this period when football started to
become really popular in America, football had a lot of
connotations that were connected with the military, and quarterback was
the field general. He was in a very prominent leadership position.
(08:42):
It was apparent that some people felt this leadership position
didn't belong to a black person. The idea that a
black guy couldn't lead men, nobody would follow him, and
that he didn't have a smart to learn a playbook.
A lot of people in football and outside of football
thought that this was true for a long.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Time, and so it's just a stunning thing when in
nineteen seventy eight, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers use a first
round draft pick on Doug Williams, a black quarterback from Rama.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
And you've been listening to John Eisenberg tell the story
of Doug Williams would go on to be the first
black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. And what a
story he's telling here about America, about race, about sports.
When we come back, how Doug Williams smashed through those barriers,
but coming in a sense the Jackie Robinson of quarterbacks,
(09:44):
Doug Williams story continues here on our American Stories, and
(10:09):
we returned to our American stories and with author John Eisenberg,
and we last left off at the nineteen seventy eight
NFL Draft, the Tampa Bay Bucks, choosing in the first
round draft pick a quarterback from Grambling State named Doug Williams.
In this segment, you'll be hearing not only from John,
(10:29):
but Doug Williams himself, as well as Doug's coaches, teammates,
and those around the league familiar with his story.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Doug is from Zachary, Louisiana, grew up in the Deep South,
grew up in a town just a segregated classic Deep
South town.
Speaker 13 (10:52):
When I was growing up, the Klukla Klaims and the
voter rights and civil rights was very much alive.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Grew up dealing with segregation.
Speaker 13 (11:02):
I lived between two intersections, and just about every Friday
night that was crosses burning on each end because with
then those two intersections, only black people lived in that area.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
You don't play Little League Baseball with whites, you don't
go to school with whites. That's what Doug grew up with.
He goes to Grambling and.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
There were certain schools that had a tradition of producing
tremendously talented individuals, and those schools got a reputation. There
was a tremendous pride if he played football at Gramblin.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Coach of Grambling is Eddie Robinson, one of the most
mainous football coaches in America.
Speaker 14 (11:46):
Eddie Robinson is probably the most underrated coach in the
history of American school.
Speaker 13 (11:52):
As a man, as a human being, as a motivator,
as a mentor, I don't think you can get anty
better than that. Wasn't about the exes and the old
it was more about the joe.
Speaker 8 (12:03):
Other football coaches have won three hundred or more games.
Speaker 15 (12:06):
Amos Alonzo stagged Bear Bryant and George Hallis, but never
has a black coach enjoyed so much success.
Speaker 16 (12:13):
If it means anything, I would want it to mean
something to the young young Blakes who have played the
game and who are playing in any other field, that
the more opportunities he ended than any other country in
the world.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
And Eddie Robinson has been sending players to the pros
since the sixties, fifties and sixties and seventies, has sent
a number of great players to the NFL and to
the American Football League and another rival league, but never
a quarterback. And Eddie Robinson said, I want to produce
the first black quarterback. He thought it would be Doug Williams.
(12:51):
You know, big, strong, smart, big arm.
Speaker 9 (12:55):
And the rest of his Williams quickly established himself as
one of the nation's been to college quarterbacks as a scrambler,
as a passer, and most critically, as a leader.
Speaker 17 (13:07):
I saw him play twice in college, and watching him
reminded me almost a Archie Nanny.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
He's an All American at Gramblings, that's all sorts of records.
Finishes high in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy.
Speaker 13 (13:19):
My senior year. You know, I had eighty four hundred yards.
I was an all time leading passer, had the most
tds in one season, wide open offense.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
Just blew everything out the.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Water and is drafted high by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
They're coached by John McKay.
Speaker 17 (13:36):
Coach McKay said, hey, look, I think I need to
send you over to Grambling.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
I want you to do some research on this quarterback
over there.
Speaker 13 (13:45):
I can remember coach Gibbs calling and saying that he
wanted to come down, and I spent a.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Day in two days with him. You know, he take
me to McDonald's. We came back and we talked football.
We got on the board, he put him on the
board to talk about things. Just had a great conversation.
Speaker 9 (14:00):
But Williams was feeling, Doug.
Speaker 13 (14:03):
What I really wanted to do in life was to
be a high school coach. I wanted to be like
my brother. I told coch Rob, I say, coaching. If
I don't get drafted within the third round, I think
I'm gonna go and coach high school football. And coach
looked at me say, hey, Cat, you can't do that. Hell,
you got to go win them when they call you.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Tampa Bay Buccaneers first round selection quarterback Doug Williams of Gramley.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Tampa Bay is a new franchise at that point two
years old. They're the worst team in the league.
Speaker 15 (14:38):
April nineteen seventy four, Floria, Tampa Bay Area is awarded
for National Football League's twenty seven franchise. The Buccaneers became
the first team in NFL history to finish ooh and fourteen.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
They are coached by John McKay, who was a famous
college coach in the seventies at Southern cal Right he
at championship teams with black quarterbacks. This is a man
that did not see colors.
Speaker 16 (15:05):
Up until that point.
Speaker 17 (15:05):
There never been a black quarterback taken in the first round.
Speaker 10 (15:09):
Coach McKay deserves a lot of credits for that.
Speaker 13 (15:11):
John McKay man. People don't know this. Jimmy Jones was
John McKay quarterback.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
In nineteen sixty nine, and.
Speaker 13 (15:20):
At that time you didn't find a lot of African
American quarterbacks playing at the major university. Coach McKay was
color blind when he came to football player. John McKay
wanted the best player on the football team first.
Speaker 15 (15:35):
I got in trouble when I first came in because
I said football was football. It's a fairly simple game
played by eleven people on each side. If you can
figure out way to get twelve on your side, you
have a better opportunity. It bothers me that they have
picked us to be the worst team in football, because
what they're doing now is challenging your physical and your
mental capacity and my ability to coach.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Now, this hurts me.
Speaker 15 (15:58):
Second worst team. I could stand it, but not the
worst thing.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
He was the rare foach.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
You know.
Speaker 13 (16:06):
Used to call me Dougie. You know, he said, oh,
whereby Douggie's gonna be all right.
Speaker 15 (16:10):
I've been a Williams fan all along. I've had to
listen to a lot of nonsense. And he realizes where
he's going in life. He's not a guy who has
two or three Mercedes, has a big hat, seventy four girlfriends.
He is intelligent. He knows what he wants to do
later on in life, and I admire important.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Y'all comes in and immediately makes the Tampa Bay Buccaneers better.
They start winning games.
Speaker 13 (16:38):
Rookie year was a little tough because I got my
job broke early in the season for seven and a
half weeks a wide chet that we won five games,
for more games in one year than they had won
in the first two years.
Speaker 18 (16:50):
He played the game in a way where it wasn't
always right, it wasn't always pretty.
Speaker 16 (16:55):
I mean, he has six ' five, about two hundred
and twenty five or thirty pounds, with no fat.
Speaker 10 (17:00):
An extraordinarily strong arm, could at the flick of a
wrist sling it sixty five seventy yards.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
I mean he let that thing go, and you see
other players would.
Speaker 6 (17:13):
Go, good, gosh, did you see that? He could throw
that fag like you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 18 (17:22):
Sometimes the balls were high. Sometimes he would get out
of sorts and throw some interceptions early. But he was
a winner, and he always gave you that feeling of
game wasn't over.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
We're still in it. We got Doug and they don't.
Speaker 18 (17:35):
He came into a situation that wasn't easy. Number One,
the franchise had not been very good. We lost twenty
six games in a row the two years before he
got there.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
Number two, Tampa was still more.
Speaker 18 (17:44):
Of a southern city than it probably is today, and
there was no question that there was a focus on
the fact that Doug was an African American oars in
those days.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
A black quarterback, but he knew the game. He was
a leader.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
His second season there in the NFC Championship Game, a
one game from the Super Bowl.
Speaker 9 (18:05):
They lose it.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
But he plays for five years with Tampa and they're
in the playoffs three times. He helps them achieve respectability.
Speaker 17 (18:14):
Year he was an expansion franchise, going all the way
to the NFC Championship Game in his career should never
come to an end. In Tampa Bay, we were going
through negotiations with Doug.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
In nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 13 (18:28):
That was only twenty eight football teams in the National
Football League. I was the fifty fourth highest paid quarterback
with only twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
The Buccaneers are owned by a man named Hugh Culverhouse
who was from the Deep South, and so when Doug's
contract ran out in Tampa in the eighties, the Hugh
Culverhouse didn't want to pay a black quarterback that going rate.
He low balled him in negotiations and basically ran him
out of town, didn't give him I'm a decent contract offer.
(19:02):
Doug became so disgusted he was out of football for
a year, and then he played in a couple of
years in another rival league, United States Football League. So
he's out of the NFL, and then in nineteen eighty
six signs with the Washington Redskins strictly as a backup.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
When we come back more of this remarkable story on
our American story, and we returned to our American stories
and with the final portion of our story on Doug Williams.
(19:45):
Telling the story is John Eisenberg, author of Rocketman. Doug
Williams himself and Doug's coaches, friends and those around the
league who saw his ascension are here to tell the
story as well. When we last left off, Doug had
left the NFL before receive eaving a call to join
for Washington Redskins.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
As a backup quarterback.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Washington already had their franchise starter in Joe thiseman that
things were about to change in that locker room. Let's
return to the story.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So he's out of the NFL, and then in nineteen
eighty six of the USFL folds.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
He received the lifeline, thanks in part to a cool twist.
Speaker 12 (20:27):
Of faith Bert and been Regan.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
Please let them back to thivemen, Fiveman did a lot
of problem and it was Lawrence Taylor who slammed Thaisman
to the ground up the forty two yard line.
Speaker 12 (20:39):
The blitz was on.
Speaker 7 (20:40):
That's not necessarily a dead play to have paul A quickly.
Lawrence Taylor is up saying thiseman is hurt, and I
don't believe Lawrence Taylor would have reacted that way.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
Lesliesman is really hurt. Is this the kind of injury
that can end an athlete's career?
Speaker 15 (20:55):
Any injury can possibly end the athletics career.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Doug rejoins the NFL. He science with the Washington Redskins
strictly as a backup. He thinks he's going to live
out his days as a backup.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
Could you come and play bag up quarterback for us?
Speaker 13 (21:11):
And I laughed and coach as a coach at this
particular time, I could play any up you want me
to play because I don't have a jaha.
Speaker 17 (21:19):
I still remember having the discussions and mister Cook.
Speaker 19 (21:23):
Is going what.
Speaker 12 (21:25):
That amount of money for a backup quarter.
Speaker 20 (21:28):
Joe always felt the most important position on a football
team as a quarterback, and the second most important position
was the backup quarterback, because if you don't have a
good backup quarterback. Your season's over at that point.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
A couple of years, he's on the rosterry place. And
then what happens is in nineteen the nineteen eighty seven season,
that goes into eighty eight, all the Redskins have a
good team, they're a winning team, and when you're going
into the playoffs, Doug has the starting job.
Speaker 9 (21:57):
Washington is a city divided by race, and the racial
divide was reflected in the city's NFL franchise, one that
was infamously the last to integrate and was ruled by
the iron fist of George Preston mush.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
When the NFL was all white, the entire league was
all white pretty much at his behest through the thirties
and through World War Two, and then after World War two,
when slowly but sure the NFL began to reintegrate, he
was a holdout. He did still then wile black players
on his team would tell the media this, and so
into the nineteen sixties there are no black players on
(22:37):
the Redskins.
Speaker 13 (22:38):
George Preston Marshall vowed to never have a African American
a player on his football team.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
He was an outspoken racist.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And to their detriment. By the way, as other teams
were bringing in the players from this great pool of talent,
they put the Redskins behind, and after their years of
winning titles, they fell off and were not as good.
That's part of the reason why, and his power within
the league slowly waned because his fellow owners saw him
(23:10):
as the dinosaur that he was.
Speaker 14 (23:12):
I don't know that people outside of Greater Washington and
people with no ties to the Redskins understood that Robert
Kennedy essentially threatened the owner, the then owner of the
Washington Redskins, to integrate his team.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Or get the hell out of what was called d
C Stadium. Get out. I mean this was ordered desegregation.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
It took decades for the NFL to overcome what George
Preston Marshall did to it from a racial perspective.
Speaker 14 (23:40):
In the Redskins fight song, the lyric which is now
fight for Old d C was Fight for Old Dixie.
Speaker 9 (23:47):
The Redskins may have had a checkered past, but for
Doug Williams in nineteen eighty six, the present meant opportunity.
Speaker 20 (23:56):
We're playing in Minnesota, it's the last game of the season,
and Jay Schrader is not playing well in the first half.
We put Doug in the second half, comeback and win
the game. And at that point the coaches decided that
even though Schrader had started more games and one more games,
Doug will.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
Gonna be a stard quarterback in the playoffs. That was
a huge gamble.
Speaker 19 (24:15):
I've always been ready to play. I never consider myself
as a backup. From a motional standpoint, I was elated
to get the opportunity to play well.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
He's gonna guide us.
Speaker 12 (24:26):
Timus plans super Bowl twenty two.
Speaker 7 (24:29):
Yeah, that just Doug with you sets up Flinch throws
it in a hurry?
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Did hear at the four touchdown?
Speaker 12 (24:35):
Watching the Redskins?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
And they go right through the playoffs, win a couple
of games, and find themselves in the Super Bowl.
Speaker 9 (24:44):
They were dark clouds ahead in the foam of the
two time AFC champion Denver Broncos.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Who were quarterbacked by John Elway, though probably the most
famous quarterback in the league. Everything the quarterbacks in the
NFL had been to that point for a white strong arm,
great talent.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
No one really gave the Redskins a chance to win
that game.
Speaker 12 (25:05):
Everybody was hyped up on John Elway. All you could
hear about was the Lway Cross. John Elway throwing the
ball so hard and he left the cross in between
chest of his receivers, And I'm like, people forgot they
were saying these same things about Doug Williams back in
the seventies.
Speaker 9 (25:20):
Although Elway was the main attraction.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Doug Williams is the first black quarterback to start a
Super Bowl game.
Speaker 11 (25:28):
Some people didn't really know how to actually deal with
the situation, particularly when they came to the media.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
How long have you been a black quarterback? How long
have you been a black quarterback, Doug?
Speaker 12 (25:36):
How long have you been a black quarterback?
Speaker 15 (25:38):
Douck said, well, I've been a quarterback for about ten years.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I've been black all my life.
Speaker 19 (25:43):
Well, you know the thing I had to say to myself.
First of all, I didn't come here with the Washington
Redskin as a black quarterback. I came here as the
quarterback of the Washington Redskin and to play a football
game to win it. Now, whatever happened after that, you know,
I can't control anyway. So the most important thing to
me was to go out and perform up to my abilities,
try to win the football game.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
Doug didn't make it a big focus. Doug Williams was
the guy.
Speaker 12 (26:04):
He was the guy to handling.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
We didn't care if Doug was black, if he was red,
if he was yet. We just wanted the guy that
was going to lead our football team.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
But Doug Wims's success or failures going to have ramifications
on future black quarterbacks.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
This was a big, big moment, not only for Doug
but for those that were gonna come behind him. You
kind of understood that if he won, it would probably
create opportunities for others.
Speaker 11 (26:26):
And this may be fair or unfair. You have this
burden on your shoulders. We need you to not only perform,
but we need you to accept.
Speaker 19 (26:33):
I think me going to the Super Bowl and getting
the opportunity to play is some of the dream that
Martin Luther King was talking about, not so much black
and white, but the fact as an individual, as a person,
and no matter who you are, what color, y'all just
get that same opportunity that everybody else gets.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
HEYDC Sports present us.
Speaker 7 (26:53):
Not watching good Redskins the National Football Conference champions against
the Denver Broncos, the American Football Conference champion. Then Super
Bowl twenty two live from San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium
from Grambling quarterback number seventeen, Doug Williams.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Washington quickly fell behind ten to nothing.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
We got off the horrible start a first offensive play
for the Bronco touchdown.
Speaker 10 (27:24):
I'm thinking it's about to be a blowout because you
know it's John Alway.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
Eight years old.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Watching John Alway play, I thought he was just the
best quarterback ever played the game.
Speaker 5 (27:31):
Oh man, we about to get.
Speaker 7 (27:33):
Drowned on first and ten, slipping down his lions and
he's hurt.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
Did you see him twist his leg when he went down.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
When William's leg crumpled beneath him, his dramatic resurgence appeared
to have reached a tragic conclusion.
Speaker 13 (27:46):
I went back to past my right foot, just kept
going back and ended up hyper extending my left knee.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
That was really concerned that. Oh no, Doug. You get
all the way into the super Bowl and now you.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Thought, oh my gosh, he's going to be out of
the game entirely. But Doug Williams had overcome greater tragedies
than this. He had always persevered despite physical and personal pain.
After sitting out two plays, he turned in a record
setting performance that was swift, stunning, and simply magnificent.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
People in football talk about the drive, the catch.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
For Redskins fans, what they'll remember about the nineteen eighty
eight Super Bowl.
Speaker 17 (28:25):
They just went down the field and went bang bang
bang bang bang.
Speaker 7 (28:29):
Literally in about a twenty minute span, the game went
from ten to nothing Denver to thirty five to ten us.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
The game is a route and Doug Williams and the
Redskins win over the Denver Broncos and John Elway and
Doug Williams throws five touchdown passes. He's the most valuable
player in the game. And one hundred million television viewers
watched Doug Williams walk off the Super Bowl field as
(28:57):
the winner.
Speaker 8 (28:58):
To see him go out and do what he did,
not just do what he did, not just win the game,
but dominate the game, it showed to me that now, finally, hopefully,
that stigma of a black NFL quarterback being successful, it's
totally over.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
For every Michael Vick and Vince Young and Cam Newton,
Robert Giffrom the third, all of those guys have to
pay homage to what Doug Williams was able to commiss.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
There is no moment in the history of black quarterbacks
of the NFL that is more important, and that is
when Doug Williams, after all those years and all the
difficulties he'd been through, wins the Super Bowl for the
Redskins and shows the world that a black quarterback can
stand at the pinnacle of the sport.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Montay Montgomery, and a special thanks to
John Eisenberg, author of Rocketman, The Black Quarterbacks who Revolutionized
Pro Football. Anybody watching that day remembered it Super Bowl
twenty two, Doug Williams taking the championship home, taking it
(30:04):
home for his team, for the country. The story of
Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl.
Here on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. In twenty twenty,
Patrick Mahomes signed what was then the largest contract in
sports history, a ten year, four hundred and fifty million
dollar extension right after his first Super Bowl victory in
nineteen ninety. Doug Williams of the Washington Redskins would be
paid one million dollars or about two million adjusted for
(00:33):
inflation after winning the nineteen eighty nine Super Bowl against
the John Elway led Denver Broncos, a huge feat not
just because the Broncos were favored, but because Doug Williams
would become the first black quarterback to lift the Lombardi Trophy.
Here to tell the story of how black men being
an NFL quarterback went from being a laughable idea to
(00:56):
the heights of sports success is John Eisen, author of Rocketman,
The Black Quarterbacks who Revolutionized Pro Football. Take it away, John.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Quarterback in the NFL is probably the most prominent position
in all of sports.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
The quarterback has been football's center of attention.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Everybody wants to be the quarterback, whether it be in
business or whether it.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
Be in sports.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
They want to be the guy that makes the decisions.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
Did he lead his team in the victory.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
That's what the quarterback.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
He's a general, he's a general author.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
This glamorous occupation requires part leadership, part charisma. There's fame
and fortune for those who master it. And in all
of sports, there isn't another position quite like NFL quarterback.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
The early days of football, the quarterback was not important.
The game was just sort of a scrum, a muddy scrum.
Most of plays involved just a back plunging into the line,
which was just a tangle of arms and legs and
really people just wrestling there at the line of scrimmage.
Not much happened. Hunting was a much bigger deal than passing.
(02:13):
There was very little scoring. It wouldn't be surprising to
see a game with the final score of six to
two safety and a touchdown and a missed extra point.
It wasn't very exciting. That all changed As football evolved
and became more sophisticated and the forward pass became a
big part of the game. Coaches said, hey, we can
(02:35):
move the ball in chunks, large chunks throwing it instead
of small chunks running it, and so that brought the
quarterback front and center into football. And then lights of
television came on, and suddenly these games were on in
living rooms across America. The quarterback had the ball in
his hands. He was throwing the ball, and it was
so dramatic. At sudden point.
Speaker 7 (02:56):
The quarterback touches the ball every part they have the
most to do whether we win or lose.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
If you have a guy that can play successfully at quarterback,
you have a chance to win half your games, just about,
no matter what happens.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
In a lot of other areas, without a quarterback, you
got a chance to win maybe one and nothing.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
I think it's the most dramatic position in the game
for losing the game.
Speaker 8 (03:17):
Shotgun left lift seventy eighty two drive v Why.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
That did it again?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
By the seventies, this position is glamorous, high paid. You
are so important that if you're the quarterback of a team,
you're really the face of the team. Whoever your quarterback was,
that said a lot about who your team was, what
you were like, and that never changed. I mean it's
even more the case now.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
This celebrity status sells tickets and insures the highest salaries
in pro football. No other player is held in such
a steam by the public, and no other position poses
such an enormous challenge.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
But there were almost no blacks at that position for
the majority of the history of the NFL. In the
first years of the NFL, they did not bar black players,
but there were very few, but the fact that there
were some was noteworthy. If the NFL had had a
(04:22):
Most Valuable Player award in its first season in nineteen twenty,
they didn't. If they'd had one would have been won
by Fritz Pollard. And he was a darting runner, a
kick returner. He kicked, he punted, he did all sorts
of things, played defense, of course, and he played for
a team in Akron, Ohio, the Akron Pros, and they
(04:43):
won the championship, all the while dealing with unbelievable racism
from fans in Akron and wherever the Akron Pros went
to play. He lines up a quarterback in a game.
By then he's playing for a different team and Hammond,
Indiana Hammond Pros long relegated to the dust bin of history.
(05:04):
But he lines up a quarterback. It's in a box score,
you can see it. And that's the first time that
a black player played quarterback in the NFL. It was
in nineteen twenty three. It was Fritz Pollard. There were
a few other black players in the league in the
nineteen twenties that just weren't many of them. And then
nineteen thirty three the word has come down, no more
(05:26):
black players. It was never written, as far as anyone
can tell, but it was an agreement. It held in
place into the late nineteen forties. No black players in
the NFL. I don't think the NFL had any intention
of reintegrating. It all happened sort of by a chance.
The Rams were in Cleveland for the first to nine
(05:48):
years of their existence, and they moved to Los Angeles,
and they're going to play a memorial Colisee in which
is still there, was built with taxpayer money for the Olympics,
the nineteen thirty two Olympics, and is governed by a
public commission, and so had a commission hearing after the
Rams moved, and they wanted a lease. Three horse riders
(06:08):
are from black newspapers attended the commission meeting and said,
you can't have this. We can't have taxpayer money supporting
a lease for a team in a segregated league. Black
taxpayers spent just as much as white tax players, and
the members of the Commission immediately said this is a problem.
You're right. So the RAMS had to integrate. They weren't
(06:30):
going to get a lease otherwise. So what happened to
the Rams started a process of teams in the rest
of the league, ever so slowly starting to bring in
black players, but a quarterback.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
That position of quarterback became very, very protected.
Speaker 9 (06:49):
We could run a ball, we could tackle, but to think,
to strategize that was supposed to be for others.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
The coaches, they said, well, we'll take a black player
as a running back. We'll take a black player as
a wide receiver. Those are more athletic positions. You don't
have to think as much. Quarterback is a thinking position.
You have to call the signals, run the offense, really
be a coach on the field.
Speaker 10 (07:13):
We said that we didn't have the mental capabilities to
be able to remember the plays.
Speaker 11 (07:19):
That was you know, certainly the perception, you know, how
can he play quarterback?
Speaker 5 (07:24):
They're not smart enough? And that's ridiculous. A.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Was he smart enough? D? Was he enough of a leader? C?
Can he come through in the clutch? D? Will white
teammates respond to it? And that white decision making apparatus
did not trust a black athlete in that position, and
(07:48):
then less obvious but certainly true. If indeed your quarterbacks
the face of your franchise, they didn't want that face
to be black. Period. The agent Lee Steinberg, famous agent,
told me NFL owners want their quarterback to be a
guy they can take to the country club, take on
their boats, and they are much more comfortable with someone
(08:11):
who looks like them. Any good black player coming out
of college, black quarterback has to play another position, or
they go play in the Canadian Football League where there's
less racism.
Speaker 12 (08:22):
You really to understand this, you have to understand America
after World War Two, this period when football started to
become really popular in America, football had a lot of
connotations that were connected with the military, and quarterback was
the field general. He was in a very prominent leadership position.
(08:42):
It was apparent that some people felt this leadership position
didn't belong to a black person. The idea that a
black guy couldn't lead men, nobody would follow him, and
that he didn't have a smart to learn a playbook.
A lot of people in football and outside of football
thought that this was true for a long.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Time, and so it's just a stunning thing when in
nineteen seventy eight, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers use a first
round draft pick on Doug Williams, a black quarterback from Rama.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
And you've been listening to John Eisenberg tell the story
of Doug Williams would go on to be the first
black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. And what a
story he's telling here about America, about race, about sports.
When we come back, how Doug Williams smashed through those barriers,
but coming in a sense the Jackie Robinson of quarterbacks,
(09:44):
Doug Williams story continues here on our American Stories, and
(10:09):
we returned to our American stories and with author John Eisenberg,
and we last left off at the nineteen seventy eight
NFL Draft, the Tampa Bay Bucks, choosing in the first
round draft pick a quarterback from Grambling State named Doug Williams.
In this segment, you'll be hearing not only from John,
(10:29):
but Doug Williams himself, as well as Doug's coaches, teammates,
and those around the league familiar with his story.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Doug is from Zachary, Louisiana, grew up in the Deep South,
grew up in a town just a segregated classic Deep
South town.
Speaker 13 (10:52):
When I was growing up, the Klukla Klaims and the
voter rights and civil rights was very much alive.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Grew up dealing with segregation.
Speaker 13 (11:02):
I lived between two intersections, and just about every Friday
night that was crosses burning on each end because with
then those two intersections, only black people lived in that area.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
You don't play Little League Baseball with whites, you don't
go to school with whites. That's what Doug grew up with.
He goes to Grambling and.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
There were certain schools that had a tradition of producing
tremendously talented individuals, and those schools got a reputation. There
was a tremendous pride if he played football at Gramblin.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Coach of Grambling is Eddie Robinson, one of the most
mainous football coaches in America.
Speaker 14 (11:46):
Eddie Robinson is probably the most underrated coach in the
history of American school.
Speaker 13 (11:52):
As a man, as a human being, as a motivator,
as a mentor, I don't think you can get anty
better than that. Wasn't about the exes and the old
it was more about the joe.
Speaker 8 (12:03):
Other football coaches have won three hundred or more games.
Speaker 15 (12:06):
Amos Alonzo stagged Bear Bryant and George Hallis, but never
has a black coach enjoyed so much success.
Speaker 16 (12:13):
If it means anything, I would want it to mean
something to the young young Blakes who have played the
game and who are playing in any other field, that
the more opportunities he ended than any other country in
the world.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
And Eddie Robinson has been sending players to the pros
since the sixties, fifties and sixties and seventies, has sent
a number of great players to the NFL and to
the American Football League and another rival league, but never
a quarterback. And Eddie Robinson said, I want to produce
the first black quarterback. He thought it would be Doug Williams.
(12:51):
You know, big, strong, smart, big arm.
Speaker 9 (12:55):
And the rest of his Williams quickly established himself as
one of the nation's been to college quarterbacks as a scrambler,
as a passer, and most critically, as a leader.
Speaker 17 (13:07):
I saw him play twice in college, and watching him
reminded me almost a Archie Nanny.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
He's an All American at Gramblings, that's all sorts of records.
Finishes high in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy.
Speaker 13 (13:19):
My senior year. You know, I had eighty four hundred yards.
I was an all time leading passer, had the most
tds in one season, wide open offense.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
Just blew everything out the.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Water and is drafted high by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
They're coached by John McKay.
Speaker 17 (13:36):
Coach McKay said, hey, look, I think I need to
send you over to Grambling.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
I want you to do some research on this quarterback
over there.
Speaker 13 (13:45):
I can remember coach Gibbs calling and saying that he
wanted to come down, and I spent a.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Day in two days with him. You know, he take
me to McDonald's. We came back and we talked football.
We got on the board, he put him on the
board to talk about things. Just had a great conversation.
Speaker 9 (14:00):
But Williams was feeling, Doug.
Speaker 13 (14:03):
What I really wanted to do in life was to
be a high school coach. I wanted to be like
my brother. I told coch Rob, I say, coaching. If
I don't get drafted within the third round, I think
I'm gonna go and coach high school football. And coach
looked at me say, hey, Cat, you can't do that. Hell,
you got to go win them when they call you.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Tampa Bay Buccaneers first round selection quarterback Doug Williams of Gramley.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Tampa Bay is a new franchise at that point two
years old. They're the worst team in the league.
Speaker 15 (14:38):
April nineteen seventy four, Floria, Tampa Bay Area is awarded
for National Football League's twenty seven franchise. The Buccaneers became
the first team in NFL history to finish ooh and fourteen.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
They are coached by John McKay, who was a famous
college coach in the seventies at Southern cal Right he
at championship teams with black quarterbacks. This is a man
that did not see colors.
Speaker 16 (15:05):
Up until that point.
Speaker 17 (15:05):
There never been a black quarterback taken in the first round.
Speaker 10 (15:09):
Coach McKay deserves a lot of credits for that.
Speaker 13 (15:11):
John McKay man. People don't know this. Jimmy Jones was
John McKay quarterback.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
In nineteen sixty nine, and.
Speaker 13 (15:20):
At that time you didn't find a lot of African
American quarterbacks playing at the major university. Coach McKay was
color blind when he came to football player. John McKay
wanted the best player on the football team first.
Speaker 15 (15:35):
I got in trouble when I first came in because
I said football was football. It's a fairly simple game
played by eleven people on each side. If you can
figure out way to get twelve on your side, you
have a better opportunity. It bothers me that they have
picked us to be the worst team in football, because
what they're doing now is challenging your physical and your
mental capacity and my ability to coach.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Now, this hurts me.
Speaker 15 (15:58):
Second worst team. I could stand it, but not the
worst thing.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
He was the rare foach.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
You know.
Speaker 13 (16:06):
Used to call me Dougie. You know, he said, oh,
whereby Douggie's gonna be all right.
Speaker 15 (16:10):
I've been a Williams fan all along. I've had to
listen to a lot of nonsense. And he realizes where
he's going in life. He's not a guy who has
two or three Mercedes, has a big hat, seventy four girlfriends.
He is intelligent. He knows what he wants to do
later on in life, and I admire important.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Y'all comes in and immediately makes the Tampa Bay Buccaneers better.
They start winning games.
Speaker 13 (16:38):
Rookie year was a little tough because I got my
job broke early in the season for seven and a
half weeks a wide chet that we won five games,
for more games in one year than they had won
in the first two years.
Speaker 18 (16:50):
He played the game in a way where it wasn't
always right, it wasn't always pretty.
Speaker 16 (16:55):
I mean, he has six ' five, about two hundred
and twenty five or thirty pounds, with no fat.
Speaker 10 (17:00):
An extraordinarily strong arm, could at the flick of a
wrist sling it sixty five seventy yards.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
I mean he let that thing go, and you see
other players would.
Speaker 6 (17:13):
Go, good, gosh, did you see that? He could throw
that fag like you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 18 (17:22):
Sometimes the balls were high. Sometimes he would get out
of sorts and throw some interceptions early. But he was
a winner, and he always gave you that feeling of
game wasn't over.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
We're still in it. We got Doug and they don't.
Speaker 18 (17:35):
He came into a situation that wasn't easy. Number One,
the franchise had not been very good. We lost twenty
six games in a row the two years before he
got there.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
Number two, Tampa was still more.
Speaker 18 (17:44):
Of a southern city than it probably is today, and
there was no question that there was a focus on
the fact that Doug was an African American oars in
those days.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
A black quarterback, but he knew the game. He was
a leader.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
His second season there in the NFC Championship Game, a
one game from the Super Bowl.
Speaker 9 (18:05):
They lose it.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
But he plays for five years with Tampa and they're
in the playoffs three times. He helps them achieve respectability.
Speaker 17 (18:14):
Year he was an expansion franchise, going all the way
to the NFC Championship Game in his career should never
come to an end. In Tampa Bay, we were going
through negotiations with Doug.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
In nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 13 (18:28):
That was only twenty eight football teams in the National
Football League. I was the fifty fourth highest paid quarterback
with only twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
The Buccaneers are owned by a man named Hugh Culverhouse
who was from the Deep South, and so when Doug's
contract ran out in Tampa in the eighties, the Hugh
Culverhouse didn't want to pay a black quarterback that going rate.
He low balled him in negotiations and basically ran him
out of town, didn't give him I'm a decent contract offer.
(19:02):
Doug became so disgusted he was out of football for
a year, and then he played in a couple of
years in another rival league, United States Football League. So
he's out of the NFL, and then in nineteen eighty
six signs with the Washington Redskins strictly as a backup.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
When we come back more of this remarkable story on
our American story, and we returned to our American stories
and with the final portion of our story on Doug Williams.
(19:45):
Telling the story is John Eisenberg, author of Rocketman. Doug
Williams himself and Doug's coaches, friends and those around the
league who saw his ascension are here to tell the
story as well. When we last left off, Doug had
left the NFL before receive eaving a call to join
for Washington Redskins.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
As a backup quarterback.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Washington already had their franchise starter in Joe thiseman that
things were about to change in that locker room. Let's
return to the story.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So he's out of the NFL, and then in nineteen
eighty six of the USFL folds.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
He received the lifeline, thanks in part to a cool twist.
Speaker 12 (20:27):
Of faith Bert and been Regan.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
Please let them back to thivemen, Fiveman did a lot
of problem and it was Lawrence Taylor who slammed Thaisman
to the ground up the forty two yard line.
Speaker 12 (20:39):
The blitz was on.
Speaker 7 (20:40):
That's not necessarily a dead play to have paul A quickly.
Lawrence Taylor is up saying thiseman is hurt, and I
don't believe Lawrence Taylor would have reacted that way.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
Lesliesman is really hurt. Is this the kind of injury
that can end an athlete's career?
Speaker 15 (20:55):
Any injury can possibly end the athletics career.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Doug rejoins the NFL. He science with the Washington Redskins
strictly as a backup. He thinks he's going to live
out his days as a backup.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
Could you come and play bag up quarterback for us?
Speaker 13 (21:11):
And I laughed and coach as a coach at this
particular time, I could play any up you want me
to play because I don't have a jaha.
Speaker 17 (21:19):
I still remember having the discussions and mister Cook.
Speaker 19 (21:23):
Is going what.
Speaker 12 (21:25):
That amount of money for a backup quarter.
Speaker 20 (21:28):
Joe always felt the most important position on a football
team as a quarterback, and the second most important position
was the backup quarterback, because if you don't have a
good backup quarterback. Your season's over at that point.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
A couple of years, he's on the rosterry place. And
then what happens is in nineteen the nineteen eighty seven season,
that goes into eighty eight, all the Redskins have a
good team, they're a winning team, and when you're going
into the playoffs, Doug has the starting job.
Speaker 9 (21:57):
Washington is a city divided by race, and the racial
divide was reflected in the city's NFL franchise, one that
was infamously the last to integrate and was ruled by
the iron fist of George Preston mush.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
When the NFL was all white, the entire league was
all white pretty much at his behest through the thirties
and through World War Two, and then after World War two,
when slowly but sure the NFL began to reintegrate, he
was a holdout. He did still then wile black players
on his team would tell the media this, and so
into the nineteen sixties there are no black players on
(22:37):
the Redskins.
Speaker 13 (22:38):
George Preston Marshall vowed to never have a African American
a player on his football team.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
He was an outspoken racist.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And to their detriment. By the way, as other teams
were bringing in the players from this great pool of talent,
they put the Redskins behind, and after their years of
winning titles, they fell off and were not as good.
That's part of the reason why, and his power within
the league slowly waned because his fellow owners saw him
(23:10):
as the dinosaur that he was.
Speaker 14 (23:12):
I don't know that people outside of Greater Washington and
people with no ties to the Redskins understood that Robert
Kennedy essentially threatened the owner, the then owner of the
Washington Redskins, to integrate his team.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Or get the hell out of what was called d
C Stadium. Get out. I mean this was ordered desegregation.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
It took decades for the NFL to overcome what George
Preston Marshall did to it from a racial perspective.
Speaker 14 (23:40):
In the Redskins fight song, the lyric which is now
fight for Old d C was Fight for Old Dixie.
Speaker 9 (23:47):
The Redskins may have had a checkered past, but for
Doug Williams in nineteen eighty six, the present meant opportunity.
Speaker 20 (23:56):
We're playing in Minnesota, it's the last game of the season,
and Jay Schrader is not playing well in the first half.
We put Doug in the second half, comeback and win
the game. And at that point the coaches decided that
even though Schrader had started more games and one more games,
Doug will.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
Gonna be a stard quarterback in the playoffs. That was
a huge gamble.
Speaker 19 (24:15):
I've always been ready to play. I never consider myself
as a backup. From a motional standpoint, I was elated
to get the opportunity to play well.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
He's gonna guide us.
Speaker 12 (24:26):
Timus plans super Bowl twenty two.
Speaker 7 (24:29):
Yeah, that just Doug with you sets up Flinch throws
it in a hurry?
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Did hear at the four touchdown?
Speaker 12 (24:35):
Watching the Redskins?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
And they go right through the playoffs, win a couple
of games, and find themselves in the Super Bowl.
Speaker 9 (24:44):
They were dark clouds ahead in the foam of the
two time AFC champion Denver Broncos.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Who were quarterbacked by John Elway, though probably the most
famous quarterback in the league. Everything the quarterbacks in the
NFL had been to that point for a white strong arm,
great talent.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
No one really gave the Redskins a chance to win
that game.
Speaker 12 (25:05):
Everybody was hyped up on John Elway. All you could
hear about was the Lway Cross. John Elway throwing the
ball so hard and he left the cross in between
chest of his receivers, And I'm like, people forgot they
were saying these same things about Doug Williams back in
the seventies.
Speaker 9 (25:20):
Although Elway was the main attraction.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Doug Williams is the first black quarterback to start a
Super Bowl game.
Speaker 11 (25:28):
Some people didn't really know how to actually deal with
the situation, particularly when they came to the media.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
How long have you been a black quarterback? How long
have you been a black quarterback, Doug?
Speaker 12 (25:36):
How long have you been a black quarterback?
Speaker 15 (25:38):
Douck said, well, I've been a quarterback for about ten years.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I've been black all my life.
Speaker 19 (25:43):
Well, you know the thing I had to say to myself.
First of all, I didn't come here with the Washington
Redskin as a black quarterback. I came here as the
quarterback of the Washington Redskin and to play a football
game to win it. Now, whatever happened after that, you know,
I can't control anyway. So the most important thing to
me was to go out and perform up to my abilities,
try to win the football game.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
Doug didn't make it a big focus. Doug Williams was
the guy.
Speaker 12 (26:04):
He was the guy to handling.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
We didn't care if Doug was black, if he was red,
if he was yet. We just wanted the guy that
was going to lead our football team.
Speaker 11 (26:12):
But Doug Wims's success or failures going to have ramifications
on future black quarterbacks.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
This was a big, big moment, not only for Doug
but for those that were gonna come behind him. You
kind of understood that if he won, it would probably
create opportunities for others.
Speaker 11 (26:26):
And this may be fair or unfair. You have this
burden on your shoulders. We need you to not only perform,
but we need you to accept.
Speaker 19 (26:33):
I think me going to the Super Bowl and getting
the opportunity to play is some of the dream that
Martin Luther King was talking about, not so much black
and white, but the fact as an individual, as a person,
and no matter who you are, what color, y'all just
get that same opportunity that everybody else gets.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
HEYDC Sports present us.
Speaker 7 (26:53):
Not watching good Redskins the National Football Conference champions against
the Denver Broncos, the American Football Conference champion. Then Super
Bowl twenty two live from San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium
from Grambling quarterback number seventeen, Doug Williams.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Washington quickly fell behind ten to nothing.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
We got off the horrible start a first offensive play
for the Bronco touchdown.
Speaker 10 (27:24):
I'm thinking it's about to be a blowout because you
know it's John Alway.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
Eight years old.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Watching John Alway play, I thought he was just the
best quarterback ever played the game.
Speaker 5 (27:31):
Oh man, we about to get.
Speaker 7 (27:33):
Drowned on first and ten, slipping down his lions and
he's hurt.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
Did you see him twist his leg when he went down.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
When William's leg crumpled beneath him, his dramatic resurgence appeared
to have reached a tragic conclusion.
Speaker 13 (27:46):
I went back to past my right foot, just kept
going back and ended up hyper extending my left knee.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
That was really concerned that. Oh no, Doug. You get
all the way into the super Bowl and now you.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Thought, oh my gosh, he's going to be out of
the game entirely. But Doug Williams had overcome greater tragedies
than this. He had always persevered despite physical and personal pain.
After sitting out two plays, he turned in a record
setting performance that was swift, stunning, and simply magnificent.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
People in football talk about the drive, the catch.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
For Redskins fans, what they'll remember about the nineteen eighty
eight Super Bowl.
Speaker 17 (28:25):
They just went down the field and went bang bang
bang bang bang.
Speaker 7 (28:29):
Literally in about a twenty minute span, the game went
from ten to nothing Denver to thirty five to ten us.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
The game is a route and Doug Williams and the
Redskins win over the Denver Broncos and John Elway and
Doug Williams throws five touchdown passes. He's the most valuable
player in the game. And one hundred million television viewers
watched Doug Williams walk off the Super Bowl field as
(28:57):
the winner.
Speaker 8 (28:58):
To see him go out and do what he did,
not just do what he did, not just win the game,
but dominate the game, it showed to me that now, finally, hopefully,
that stigma of a black NFL quarterback being successful, it's
totally over.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
For every Michael Vick and Vince Young and Cam Newton,
Robert Giffrom the third, all of those guys have to
pay homage to what Doug Williams was able to commiss.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
There is no moment in the history of black quarterbacks
of the NFL that is more important, and that is
when Doug Williams, after all those years and all the
difficulties he'd been through, wins the Super Bowl for the
Redskins and shows the world that a black quarterback can
stand at the pinnacle of the sport.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Montay Montgomery, and a special thanks to
John Eisenberg, author of Rocketman, The Black Quarterbacks who Revolutionized
Pro Football. Anybody watching that day remembered it Super Bowl
twenty two, Doug Williams taking the championship home, taking it
(30:04):
home for his team, for the country. The story of
Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl.
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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