Boomer on Cincinnati Bengals Ring of Honor
Boomer on Cincinnati Bengals Ring of Honor
Transcript
00:00 is truly an honor to be inducted into the Bengals ring of honor
00:04 to join some great players and of course,
00:08 the great history that we have achieved as a franchise.
00:12 So with that, I just want to say,
00:14 I'm very happy to be going in.
00:16 I look forward to seeing Chad on that night
00:18 and celebrating our history together
00:20 and hopefully watching a great team
00:24 like the Cincinnati Bengals this year
00:26 add to the legacy of this already great franchise.
00:30 - Boomer, congratulations on going in the ring of honor.
00:34 Know it's something special for you,
00:35 but talk about the moment you got the call
00:38 and what went through your mind and your emotions.
00:41 - I got the call from Mike Brown directly.
00:45 Mike's very low key guy, as we all know.
00:48 He said he was very happy to announce
00:51 and to tell me that I was going into the ring of honor.
00:54 And in true Mike Brown, very,
00:57 just kind of laid back fashion.
00:59 He says, you deserve to be here.
01:02 You know, we owe you a lot.
01:04 And he made me feel great about the honor.
01:07 And I never really thought it was going to happen,
01:09 but here I am some 39 years after the day
01:13 that I was drafted.
01:14 And it's really kind of a surreal feeling
01:16 to be honest with you.
01:18 - Thank you.
01:19 - Boomer Seg here, congratulations.
01:24 What's your thoughts?
01:25 I mean, you know, some highlights of you
01:29 as a number seven back there as quarterback for the Bengals.
01:32 - Well, Seg, you know,
01:34 it feels like a whole another lifetime ago.
01:36 And when you and I and everybody at 700 WLW
01:40 and certainly all the TV stations that were covering us,
01:44 it was a wild time back in the eighties
01:46 and the early nineties for sure.
01:48 I have a lot of great memories.
01:50 Those memories include my rookie year
01:53 where I didn't understand a thing that I was doing
01:57 to the 1987 strike year to the 88 Super Bowl year
02:02 to our next foray into the playoffs
02:05 and beating Houston at home as significantly as we did.
02:09 And then of course, the great coaching staff that I had,
02:12 we only had five coaches on that staff.
02:14 Sam Weish was the offensive coach
02:16 who was required to take care of us as quarterbacks
02:20 because of his background.
02:21 He was also obviously our head coach, Bruce Coslet,
02:24 Jimmy McNally, Jimmy Anderson, Tiger Johnson,
02:27 and Bruce Coslet, of course, our offensive coordinator.
02:30 And they handed me the no huddle offense.
02:33 It was quite the experiment.
02:35 And that experiment turned out to be great
02:37 for all of us that were a part of it.
02:39 - Congratulations.
02:41 - Thanks, Seg.
02:42 - We were just going back to something you just said.
02:46 Why exactly did you think it wasn't gonna happen for you?
02:50 - Well, it's interesting.
02:52 I did Monday night football for 20 years,
02:55 two years on TV, 18 years on radio.
02:57 And I would go to Monday night games
03:00 and I'd watch the home teams honoring their past
03:02 and watching the home teams honoring players
03:05 and teams of the past.
03:06 And the Bengals had done some of that.
03:08 I know they honored our 88 Super Bowl
03:10 and the 82 Super Bowl team.
03:12 But they never really ever did anything
03:15 in regards to the home team.
03:18 They never really ever did anything
03:19 in regards to recognizing and remembering
03:22 the great history of players that they have.
03:25 And I do believe that the team has turned the corner
03:29 over the last three to four years.
03:30 And there is a new emphasis on trying to reunite
03:34 the older players with some of the newer players,
03:37 the older fans with the younger fans.
03:39 And it's great to be going in now
03:41 because the team is so good.
03:42 And because they do have a great quarterback in Joe Burrow.
03:45 You know, I would tell you five years ago,
03:47 I would have never thought this day was happening.
03:50 But now that it is happening
03:51 and the Ring of Honor is up and running,
03:55 I know it creates some angst for some other players
03:59 that do believe that they belong in.
04:01 And they all do belong in, by the way.
04:03 It's just that their time is coming.
04:05 And like me, we had to wait.
04:08 So that's why I never really thought it was gonna happen
04:11 until I actually saw Anthony Munoz step on that field,
04:15 that first time with Kenny Anderson
04:17 and those guys going in
04:19 and the list of players that are already in,
04:22 make me realize that we are now on the right path
04:25 to recognize the legacy of the players
04:27 who have played for the franchise.
04:28 - Hey, Boomer, it's Jeremy Ralph, Fox 19.
04:34 Do you have a favorite memory
04:36 from your time in Cincinnati you could share?
04:38 - You know, I have a lot of favorite memories on the field.
04:42 I mean, winning the AFC Championship game,
04:44 of course, against the Buffalo Bills
04:46 and running off the field
04:48 in the arms of my backup quarterback, Mike Norsep,
04:50 that day was one I'll never forget.
04:53 I do remember a game in which I played my rookie year
04:57 and I think I threw the ball to Chris Collins
04:58 for 35 times that game, whether he was open or not.
05:02 And I remember on that Monday morning,
05:03 I sent a masseuse to his house and he answered the door
05:06 and he turned the masseuse away and said,
05:07 "Nobody can touch this body today, it's so beat up."
05:11 So I might've led to his quick demise, if you will.
05:15 But at the end of the day, there's so many great memories
05:18 and so many great teammates, even in the down years.
05:22 You go through it with a group of men
05:24 and you realize that it doesn't last very long.
05:27 So you learn as you get older
05:29 that you don't take it for granted.
05:31 And I've often said that my final year in Cincinnati
05:34 in those final five games
05:36 were some of the most fulfilling football
05:37 that I had ever played
05:39 because of the young players that were on that team
05:42 and watching those young players
05:44 finally figure out just how truly good they could be
05:47 and bringing those players to the forefront.
05:50 So it's been such a long time since I played,
05:55 thinking back on those last five games,
05:56 it was a great way for me to end it.
05:58 - Boomer, the way you guys played offense back in the day,
06:03 before the Jim Kelly red gun offense,
06:07 obviously there was the sugar offense
06:09 and the tempo that you guys brought to the NFL offensively.
06:13 How much pride do you take in kind of helping
06:16 to revolutionize the way offenses played in the NFL?
06:19 - Well, I think anybody would say
06:21 that they feel very prideful about that.
06:24 And I always felt like Sam and Bruce
06:27 were concocting different things
06:29 to kind of keep me engaged and keep pushing me mentally
06:33 and requiring me to be a leader on the field,
06:37 both as a player and how to run practice.
06:40 And then of course, in the meeting rooms,
06:42 I'll never forget answering all the questions
06:44 that Sam Weish would be asking me in front of the team.
06:47 And you talk about pressure,
06:49 you have to know the formations, the defenses,
06:51 the checks, the audibles,
06:53 the calls at the line of scrimmage,
06:55 all the different code words we had.
06:56 So, he was fun.
06:58 There was never a dull moment with Sam,
07:00 I can tell you that.
07:01 And I don't know, it's great to reflect back on those days
07:07 and to think what we were doing was cutting edge.
07:09 And then when I look in today's offenses
07:12 and I see the tempo that some of these offenses play with,
07:16 to me, that's what we were all about.
07:17 It was all about tempo.
07:19 It was always about trying to keep the defense
07:21 on their heels.
07:22 And never did I do that more with the group of guys
07:26 than I did my last five games that year,
07:28 because, and I tell people this all the time,
07:30 I was running scout team
07:32 as Jeff Blake was the starting quarterback.
07:34 Jeff got hurt against Indianapolis,
07:35 never really regained that promise that we had seen from him
07:40 earlier in his career.
07:42 So, I took over and I just went so fast
07:45 because when I was doing the scout team in practice,
07:49 I was driving Dick LeBeau crazy
07:51 because I kept running the plays so fast
07:53 and telling all the guys,
07:54 "Look, I just wanna get off this field.
07:55 I wanna get off this field.
07:56 We're going as fast as we possibly can."
07:58 And I remember my center, Derek Brill,
08:00 saying to me in the middle of, I think,
08:02 a Tennessee game on Thursday night,
08:04 he goes, "You gotta slow down.
08:05 We're gonna have a heart attack out here."
08:07 And meanwhile, Corey Dillman is just running
08:09 right through the Tennessee Titans.
08:11 And Jeff Fischer asked me after that game,
08:13 "What exactly were you doing in that game?"
08:17 And I said, "You know, Jeff, nothing really different
08:19 other than just turning up the tempo."
08:22 And that's when I really noticed how big of an impact
08:26 that could have in a game.
08:27 - Boomer, I think back a few years ago,
08:31 and you're holding the Bengals helmet
08:33 next to Joe Burrow before the draft on set there on CBS.
08:37 And now, obviously, we know what he's done,
08:40 what this team has done over the past few years.
08:41 How enjoyable has it been for you to see their ascension
08:45 and see how great they've been?
08:47 - You know, I actually did that to Carson Palmer, too,
08:50 as well. (laughs)
08:52 And I welcomed them both to our dysfunctional family
08:54 for whatever reason.
08:56 But, and I said it in a funny way,
08:57 and I said that, "Look, the one thing I do know,
09:00 Mike Brown knows quarterbacks.
09:02 He really does."
09:03 And when you think about the quarterback
09:05 and the stable of quarterbacks that the Bengals had,
09:07 the stability at quarterback that the Bengals have had
09:09 for most of their existence,
09:11 it tells you that Mike knows exactly
09:14 what a quarterback needs to look like,
09:15 how that quarterback needs to act,
09:18 and how he can get the best out of that player.
09:21 You know, Joe Burrow was a can't-miss prospect.
09:24 We knew coming out of LSU, he was gonna be a superstar.
09:27 I have to say that he has exceeded every expectation
09:29 that I had for him coming into the league.
09:31 I know people say that he's the second-best quarterback
09:34 in the league.
09:35 I think he's pressing, you know,
09:37 Patrick Mahomes for that title of best,
09:39 but until you knock the best off and you win a Super Bowl,
09:42 I guess you necessarily can't claim that.
09:45 But that's not who Joe is.
09:46 Joe is, I would say, a humble player,
09:50 but also a very fierce competitive player,
09:54 which is why his teammates, I think, really do respect him.
09:56 So going in under these circumstances with Chad,
10:00 that Monday night should be a great night
10:02 because this team is one of the better teams
10:04 in the league now.
10:06 - Boomer, to that point about Joe Burrow,
10:08 you know, what you guys had with that 1988 team,
10:11 how much of that do you see in this current Bengals team
10:14 that, like you said, has just taken off
10:15 in the last two or three years?
10:17 - I'll tell you, it's similar.
10:20 I think that they throw the ball a lot better than we did.
10:22 I mean, early in the season,
10:23 we threw the ball really, really well in '88,
10:26 and we were throwing the ball down the field
10:27 with Timmy McGee and Rodney Ullman
10:29 and Chris Collinsworth and Eddie Brown and Ira Hillary.
10:32 We had great stable of running backs
10:35 with James Brooks and Icky Woods and Stanford Jennings.
10:38 We really had great players.
10:41 And most of all, we had the biggest offensive line
10:43 in football.
10:44 And I'll never forget the second game
10:46 in the '88 season at Philadelphia.
10:48 That was the real test
10:49 because they had the best defensive line in football.
10:52 And our offensive line just absolutely gave me
10:55 all the time I needed.
10:56 And we hit so many big plays in that game.
10:58 And then our running game took over late in the year.
11:00 So I don't see that as the case with the Bengals here.
11:05 This is a pass first team.
11:07 This is aggressive head coach with Zach Taylor.
11:10 They trust their quarterback to make the decisions
11:12 at the line of scrimmage.
11:14 And he is in such synchronicity, I should say,
11:17 with his wide receivers.
11:19 Whether it be Jamar or Tee
11:21 or any of the other players that he is playing with now,
11:25 it shows you that Joe Mixon wanted to be a part of a winner
11:28 by taking less money to stay there.
11:29 And I think that speaks volumes to who this offense is,
11:33 who the coach is.
11:34 And then ultimately,
11:35 they know that they have a winning quarterback.
11:38 - Boomer, kind of to touch on what you spoke about
11:40 a little bit earlier about kind of not sure
11:41 if this was gonna happen.
11:42 What's it been like to see the transition of this franchise
11:45 over the last few years
11:46 and kind of how they've kind of evolved recently?
11:49 - Well, I think Elizabeth and Caroline
11:52 have a lot to do with that.
11:53 So the great-granddaughters of the great Paul Brown
11:56 are right in the mix.
11:57 And their mom has taught them well.
12:01 They're gonna be great stewards of this franchise
12:04 moving forward for many, many, many years to come,
12:06 much like Katie has done.
12:08 And the power she wields within the NFL,
12:11 being one of the first women to wield that much power
12:14 is really amazing.
12:14 That's cutting edge, but you would never know that
12:17 because nobody ever really talks about that.
12:19 As like nobody ever really talks about
12:22 the great Willie Anderson,
12:23 who was a four-time All-Pro football player.
12:26 When I tell people that, friends of mine,
12:29 that Willie was a four-time All-Pro, they're like, "Really?"
12:33 I don't know why nobody knows that,
12:34 but it's kind of like the way Katie runs the team.
12:38 Like nobody knows it unless you really pay attention to it.
12:42 And there have been some articles written,
12:44 but probably not enough,
12:46 but that's not who the Brown and Blackburn families are.
12:49 They're very low-key, very under the radar.
12:51 And they just want to run a football team
12:54 and hopefully finally get a Super Bowl.
12:56 - To that point, Boomer, are there things about
12:59 the way the Blackburns and the Browns run the Bengals now
13:02 that you can appreciate better outside of the game,
13:05 20 years or whatever,
13:06 after you've played than you didn't back then?
13:09 - Yeah, I mean, they've morphed into this century now
13:13 of the NFL and they've caught up.
13:15 And when Joe gets his new contract,
13:18 it's going to be earth-shattering for a lot of people to see.
13:22 And this is a small market team.
13:23 This is a family that doesn't have
13:26 any other outside businesses other than the team.
13:28 It was amazing when PayCor finally became
13:33 the title sponsor of the stadium.
13:35 And I don't know if they had to do that financially
13:37 because ultimately they're going to have to pay
13:39 a lot of these great players.
13:41 But the league has grown so much over the last 20 years.
13:46 And whether you like the commissioner
13:47 or you don't like the commissioner,
13:49 he has done well by a lot of these owners
13:52 in terms of stadiums, in terms of revenue,
13:55 moving the draft around, the Super Bowl popularity,
13:58 the television popularity, the radio popularity,
14:02 fantasy football, now of course gambling's involved.
14:05 So it has grown significantly.
14:07 And the Bengals have grown with them.
14:09 And they do have one of the best stadiums in the league.
14:12 And when they do win and they have great players
14:14 like we did back in the '80s,
14:16 and during Marvin Lewis's time there too,
14:18 when they were winning with Carson Palmer
14:20 and of course Andy Dalton,
14:22 you saw the fans come out and support the team.
14:24 And now the fan base is rabid
14:26 because they have some of the best players
14:28 at their respective positions in the NFL.
14:30 So it's great to see that the Bengals
14:32 are now catching up with everybody.
14:36 And I know that Corey Doan a few weeks ago
14:39 said that he thought he should be in.
14:41 Well, Corey should have been in 20 years ago.
14:44 We're playing catch up.
14:45 Everybody's playing catch up.
14:47 And guys on that list that I was on with this year,
14:50 whether it be Tim Crumrye, Max Montoya, Lamar Parrish,
14:54 any of those guys, David Fulcher,
14:56 Chris Collinsworth, of course,
14:59 all of those guys will get in and should be in.
15:02 And it's a shame that we're not all in together
15:06 at this time just yet.
15:07 We just have to wait some more.
15:09 - Hey, Boomer, when you think about Sam Weiss,
15:11 obviously he meant a lot to you,
15:13 but is there another coach that maybe we don't know
15:16 a lot about that to you really helped shape
15:19 the quarterback that you became?
15:21 - Well, Bruce Coslett.
15:23 I think Bruce Coslett was always the hammer.
15:25 People didn't see that when he was the offensive coordinator
15:28 when I got there.
15:29 And he was always the one telling me to keep my elbow up,
15:32 watch the footwork.
15:33 And Sam would work on my footwork and all that other stuff,
15:36 but he still had to be the head coach to everybody else.
15:39 Bruce was the tough guy for me.
15:41 And it's one of the reasons why
15:42 when I did ask the Bengals to trade me after the '92 season,
15:45 I wanted to reunite with Bruce in New York
15:48 because I knew his offense and he knew me as a player.
15:50 And I knew at that point in time in my career,
15:53 the best thing for me would be to reunite with a guy
15:56 that was gonna be tough on me,
15:57 that was gonna coach me hard.
15:59 I didn't realize he was only gonna last one year
16:01 here in New York, which was very, very unfortunate
16:03 for me and him and his family.
16:05 And one of the toughest moments in my NFL career
16:08 was finding out that he was being replaced.
16:10 So Bruce was very, very significant
16:14 in my development as a player.
16:16 And then later on in my career,
16:17 when I came back to Cincinnati and he was the head coach,
16:21 Kenny Anderson was the offensive coordinator
16:22 and was a quarterback coach.
16:24 And I cannot go without saying,
16:27 if it weren't for Kenny and Turk,
16:29 when I first got into Cincinnati,
16:31 I don't necessarily know that I would have known
16:32 how to become a professional football player.
16:34 I watched how they studied, I watched how they practiced.
16:39 And I spent a lot of time watching Kenny drink Coors Light.
16:41 So a lot of that stuff wore off on me.
16:45 And I have to tell you,
16:46 it was some of the greatest moments of my life
16:49 being around those guys, especially when I came back.
16:52 - Thank you.
16:53 - Boomer, you always had your locker
16:59 with the offensive line
17:01 and you kind of had a special relationship with those guys.
17:04 Is that something you told Tom Gray,
17:06 always put me with the big guys
17:07 and maybe talk about that relationship with them?
17:11 - Well, that comes back to my high school coach,
17:12 Sal Champy.
17:13 He was an offensive lineman for Purdue back in the '60s
17:18 and his quarterback was Bob Greasy.
17:21 And when I became my high school coach's quarterback
17:24 in high school, he would used to tell me
17:26 how Bob Greasy would handle things
17:28 and how he would do things.
17:29 And he just loved and admired Bob Greasy.
17:31 So it was just a natural thing that came to me
17:35 to be around the offensive lineman.
17:37 I used to do their offensive lineman's prayer
17:39 in high school that my high school coach taught me
17:41 and that prayer went,
17:43 "We work the hardest, we're known the least,
17:44 "but who cares for we are the reason."
17:47 And that was back when offensive linemen
17:48 weren't making any money
17:49 and the quarterback was making money compared to them.
17:53 So I remember giving them Tiffany etchings
17:56 with that prayer so they could have that
17:58 and know how much I appreciated the hard work
18:00 and dedication that went into doing what they did
18:03 because their practices didn't look a lot like fun to me,
18:07 Jeff, I mean, over there slamming their heads
18:09 against the sleds and all the different paraphernalia
18:14 we'd have in the practice field
18:16 and then go over and try to fight
18:18 with the offensive lineman for two hours in practice.
18:20 It didn't seem like a lot of fun,
18:22 but I just wanted always to them to know
18:23 that I appreciated everything that they did for us
18:26 as an offense.
18:28 - Did you always want your locker with them?
18:29 Was that something that you did?
18:31 - Absolutely.
18:32 I mean, offensive linemen are some of the funniest guys
18:35 in the league.
18:36 And I think we probably had the funniest
18:38 and his name was Brian Blatos.
18:41 There wasn't a guy in the locker room
18:42 funnier than Brian Blatos.
18:44 And to think back to him and Joe Walter and Bruce Reimers
18:48 and Bruce Kaczurski and Dave Remington
18:50 and Max Montoya and Anthony Munoz,
18:53 and think of that group of guys.
18:55 I mean, and to be in the meetings with them
18:57 and to go through the walkthroughs with them
18:59 and just to be around them all the time,
19:02 it didn't get much better than that.
19:03 And I used to watch film with them
19:05 every Thursday after practice.
19:07 I'd watch the end zone film
19:09 and we'd go over the checks and the defensive fronts,
19:12 making sure that we were all on the same page
19:14 about what plays we wanted to run,
19:16 what pass protections we wanted.
19:19 And that's one of the reasons I think why,
19:21 Jimmy McNally goes down in history
19:23 as one of the greatest offensive line coaches,
19:25 because that offensive line
19:27 was literally like a ballet group,
19:29 the way that they would work their feet together
19:32 and how they keep their shoulders together.
19:34 And very rarely were they ever beaten
19:37 because of a mistake, an assignment mistake.
19:40 I do remember one time we were playing,
19:42 I think it was a San Diego Chargers,
19:44 and I held onto the ball too long.
19:48 And I got sacked by somebody, I forget who it was,
19:50 maybe Junior Seau, could have been, I don't know.
19:52 And Max Montoya and I were laying both on the ground
19:55 and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him
19:57 and he's screaming at me,
19:58 "Throw the damn ball."
20:01 And I learned a very valuable lesson that day,
20:04 not to piss him off.
20:05 Thank you.
20:12 - You're welcome.
20:13 - Any other questions for Boomer?
20:16 - Boomer, I'll just ask you real quick about Chad Johnson
20:20 and your thoughts of what made him
20:23 such a legendary personality on and off the field.
20:27 - Well, his performance on the field speaks for itself.
20:30 He was one of the most difficult players to cover.
20:32 And I think he had the right coach in Marvin Lewis.
20:34 I think he could talk to you more about that than I can.
20:38 Much like I felt that way about Bruce and Sam,
20:41 I'm sure he feels that way about maybe you, Jackson,
20:45 and also of course Marvin.
20:47 So it was apparent to me that when he was playing
20:51 for about five or six years there,
20:53 he was like right there at the top
20:55 with Terrell Owens and with Joe Horn and all those guys.
20:58 You know, and then they kind of took it to another level
21:00 and they did all the celebrations and everything,
21:03 which were, I think, fun for the fans.
21:06 I think the fans really enjoyed it.
21:08 And it's because of that group of wide receivers
21:11 that we now see the NFL allowing these players
21:15 to do their celebration.
21:16 So much like the no huddle offense
21:18 was a trendsetter back in the '80s,
21:21 I think Chad Johnson was a trendsetter
21:25 when he played and he basically opened the door
21:27 for all of these players now
21:29 to do all of their celebrations on the field
21:32 after they score a touchdown.