McKay on Top of His Game

It was a clash of wills that threatened to tear apart the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

On one side was Coach Jon Gruden, once the boy wonder of coaching, a renowned workaholic so confident in his own philosophy and methods that he walked out on Al Davis rather than submit to the Raider way.

On the other side was General Manager Rich McKay, whose claim to fame in his younger years was that he was the son of legendary USC Coach John McKay.

Whom would you take?

The Glazer family, owners of the Buccaneers, cast their lot with Gruden. Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons, hired McKay away in December 2003.

A year later, the Buccaneers, winners of a Super Bowl only two years ago, finished at the bottom of their division -- where they had been through much of their existence -- having gone 5-11.

The Falcons, 5-11 and last in their division themselves a year ago, went 11-5 and will play the Eagles on Sunday in Philadelphia in the NFC championship game.

Is McKay just one lucky guy, fortunate to be in the right place at the right time?

Nobody around the Falcons, or in the corridors of NFL headquarters, thinks so. Nobody talks about good fortune or coincidence when McKay’s name comes up.

Having built a Super Bowl winner in Tampa Bay and then rebuilt the Falcons in one year, McKay has an image so strong that, when speculation turns to a possible successor to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, the first name on most lists is Rich McKay’s.

“It doesn’t happen because the guy was lucky,” said Reggie Roberts, Falcon vice president of communications. “It happened because the guy is in charge of football operations and knows what he is doing.”

McKay isn’t about to get into a public feud with Gruden, and he’s not about to pat himself on the back either.

“It’s nice to hear some of the things people say, but I just feel very fortunate to be here,” he said.

Having co-founded Home Depot, and then spent an estimated $545 million to buy the Falcons, Blank knows about high finance. But he also knows that what he doesn’t know is football personnel.

“I knew the best thing I could do was to hire the right people,” Blank said. “I know where I belong.”

Not in the general manager’s chair, making trades or picking draft choices. So Blank began his search for someone who could effectively fill that seat.

“The name that constantly surfaced as being one of the tops in the league was Rich McKay,” Blank said.

Thus began a long courtship.

When Gruden was hired before the 2002 season, without McKay’s being consulted, McKay started to talk seriously with Blank. Ultimately, though, McKay couldn’t pull the trigger. His father had left USC to coach the expansion Buccaneers. His wife, Terrin, is from Tampa.

McKay had already made one painful move in his life. The kid who had played hide-and-seek in Heritage Hall, who had bled cardinal and gold, had reluctantly moved to Tampa with his father as a 17-year-old. After becoming a lawyer, he had joined the Buccaneers, for whom he had once been a ball boy, as the team’s legal counsel and moved all the way up to the general manager’s chair.

Under his guidance, the once-hapless team made the playoffs five times in eight seasons, culminating in victory in Super Bowl XXXVII.

But it became increasingly obvious that he and Gruden had different views of the future.

“I’m not going to bad-mouth him, but his approach and mine were very different,” McKay said. “Where the franchise was going philosophically didn’t fit in with my vision. He had done a great job as coach of getting us over the top. I thought it was better if the general manager moved on.”

So talks with Blank were renewed, and this time they ended with an agreement, in December 2003, on a six-year contract. The Falcons’ next game was five days away.

Against the Buccaneers. In Tampa Bay.

“It was the strangest day of my life,” McKay said.

The Buccaneers were showing the crowd highlights of their Super Bowl-winning season, and the man who had long dreamed of such a moment and had been instrumental in bringing it about had to watch from the isolation of the visiting owner’s box.

McKay, however, didn’t have time to linger in the past. There was a coach to hire in Atlanta. Having inherited the league’s worst defense, McKay signed Jim Mora Jr., who had never been a head coach, but had been a defensive specialist as an assistant.

Under McKay, the Falcons got rid of several players who they said lacked the right attitude, and moved from a 3-4 to a 4-3 defensive alignment. Atlanta went on to lead the league in sacks for the first time in its history and moved up to 14th in defense this season.

There were 25 new names on this year’s roster, but the biggest change, says one organization figure after another, is the attitude.

And the 45-year-old McKay.

Said Roberts: “He’s super smart, with an Ivy League [Princeton] education, but he never puts on a face that says, ‘I’m smarter than you.’ He can mix with corporate CEOs, but he can also be one of the boys and that’s what endears him to the players.”

And to Blank.

“The important thing is not just the rings and the championships,” the Falcon owner said. “It’s also who was in the boat with you, who was paddling beside you. At the end of the day, we are all human beings.”

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The Real McKay

Rich McKay was able to help turn around Tampa Bay as general manager, and Atlanta hoped he could do the same with the Falcons. He was named president and general manager Dec. 15, 2003. In his first season Atlanta went from a 5-11 team to an 11-5 team. The effect he had in Tampa:

*--* TAMPA BAY Pre-Mckay McKay BUCCANEERS 1976-94 1995-02 Super Bowl titles 0 1 NFC title games 1 2 Reg. season record 87-204-1 73-55 Winning percentage 300 570 Playoff appearances 3 5 10-win seasons 1 4 Division titles 2 2 Playoff victories 1 5 Home playoff gms 2 3 Home playoff wins 1 3 Pro Bowl honors 18 42 All-Pro honors 2 15 Sellout percentage *28% **70% Top 10 in defense 3 6

*--*

* 41 home games; ** 45 home games

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

* Before joining Tampa Bay on a full-time basis, McKay was an attorney with a Tampa law firm, served as the Buccaneers’ legal counsel for six years and helped with the reworking of the team’s lease agreement with the Tampa Sports Authority in 1991.

* Taught sports/entertainment law at Stetson University’s College of Law, earned bachelor’s degree in 1981 from Princeton, graduated from Stetson’s College of Law in 1984 and clerked for two years for U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges in Tampa.

* Born March 16, 1959 in Eugene, Ore., McKay is the son of the late USC and Tampa Bay coach John McKay.