Sam Wyche, who was the Cincinnati Bengals‘ head coach during the 1980s, died on Thursday in Pickens, South Carolina where he served as a volunteer coach at Pickens High School in a statement issued on behalf of the team. He was 74 years old, and battling recurring melanoma.
“Sam was a wonderful guy. We got to know him as both a player and a coach,” Bengals president Mike Brown said in a statement. “As our coach, he had great success and took us to the Super Bowl. He was friends with everyone here, both during his tenure as head coach and afterwards. We not only liked him, we admired him as a man. He had a great generosity of spirit and lived his life trying to help others. We express our condolences to Jane and his children Zak and Kerry.”
Videos by PopCulture.com
Wyche was the Bengals head coach from 1984 to 1991, and posted a 61-66 overall record. However, he had his share of success in Cincinnati as he led the team to the Super Bowl in 1988. The team just fell short of a Super Bowl win as they fell to the San Francisco 49ers 20-16.
“My objective was to make the team more familiar with each other,” Wyche said back in 2018 when talking about the camp before the 1988 season. “There was a lot of division in the locker room (because of the strike), a lot of close games we could have won but didn’t for every reason imaginable.
“I wanted them to be able to look at each other in the fourth quarter in December with the playoffs on the line and know their teammates’ wives names and know what was important in their lives, what they wanted to do after football. Truly a team, a family that would work for each other because they knew each other that well. I was wondering how many guys left after bed check, but nobody seemed to.”
Wyche was also the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1992-1995, but never posted a winning record. He also spent time as the quarterbacks coach of the Buffalo Bills in 2004 and 2005.
Born in Atlanta, Wyche played in the NFL from 1968-1976 and he played quarterback. He won a Super Bowl when he was an assistant coach for the 49ers in 1981.
