 We wore black uniforms because black wood and the color was an attitude. Everybody watches, everybody wants to be with us and party with us. We was the show. Over the last 30 years, how many teams can say that? That's what made that 91 team so special. He falls out of ground, he goes, Jared, I got you! Welcome to the 30th anniversary special of the 1991 Atlanta Falcons, also known as the rudest team in the five history. Never call you rude, Jesse. Never, man, never. You never called you good. You never called you good. You never called you good. I'm Chris Rim and I'm joined by Coach Jerry Glanville, right receiver Michael Haynes, linebacker Jesse Tuggle, defensive end Robert Liles, and quarterback Chris Miller. We're going to check out a video to recap the team before we get started. You've got to give Atlanta a lot of credit. Oh, they play a different style of football before they get to take play. They play. They play. Oh, I know all about that. Yeah, you know him. Yeah, no, he's a good guy. They live on the edge, but they play hard. And they just don't talk about what they're going to do. That's what they do. That's right. Everybody knows it. I went in their locker room yesterday. You couldn't blame the racket. Going to throw a lead pattern at a corner, and it is touchdown right in the corner. They fight. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine. Right there, baby. That's what I got. Absolutely. I brought back to you. Car 54. What do you remember walking out in the field like that at the end? Oh, man, we was the show. Everybody wanted everybody watches. Everybody wanted to be with us and party with us. We're on our way. We're on our way. We just beat them at home. I think for the second time. Yeah. You know, that was the first time the Falcons had been in the playoffs. Playoff. A very long time. 11 years. So everybody was excited, man. And then, you know, our first playoff game, I know for us, is a group. So we were just having fun. Yeah. It ain't been the league five years, and we haven't had a winning season yet. But they're winning the playoffs in New Orleans. And then that ball was up in the air that Chris had you through. And then Michael Haines came down with it. He got lead. He got lead. Okay. We're going to win this game here. This is my first playoff win as a professional. So it was a real big day for me, too. And let's, before we get into that, let's take a video. We have another video to take a look at just the show and the culture that y'all had. Let's take a look at it. Uh-oh. People can't even stand on the sideline celebrities in the NFL because of us. We had all-star cast on the sideline. Do it again, man. The distractions and everything else that Jerry Glamble causes, he's bringing in MC Hammer. They're waiting his arrival now to surprise the team. He's going to lead them in the pre-game prayer and also with a little bit of wrap. You were in the locker room. What is the move in there right now? Oh, it's the same as usual. They all fired up and ready to go. Too legit to quit. Hey, good to see you, Hammer. All right, get you ticket at the door. It caught on. And until this day, all Atlanta wants, man, is a winner. Or someone with a winning characteristic, a winning trait, a winning DNA. And Atlanta is a city that's ready and willing to embrace and support you in a multi-missive way. You gave me chills. I knew it right. I hate about that. All the celebrities we had on the sideline at school. I think MC Hammer was just, he was one of the biggest celebrities at the time in the country. Yeah. On the outside line, he was going to kick out of that. Him and Deion had this thing going on where Deion was a prime time superstar and obviously MC Hammer was too. So they blend it right together. And then Deion came to me and said, MC Hammer wants to talk to the team before the game. He wants to talk to the team. He wants to give the team talk. You know what I mean? The news, his talks were a whole lot better than he thought that was. And then we went out to San Francisco a month later or so. Y'all don't remember, we went to the airport and there was Evander Holyfield. And he got on the plane and nobody invited. And he came to me and he says, I want to talk to the team. Hell. Let him go too. You can have my seat. That's right. I got to talk to the team this way over here. I said, man, this could go on for hours. So I probably said, how about that? Daryl, you gotta think about this right here though. This is 1991. We got the World Heavyweight Champion right here in Atlanta. On all sidelines. On our bus. On our plane. On the plane. How many teams get, when you look around over the last 30 years, how many teams can say that? Nobody. Nobody. That's why we make that 91 team so special. You think about it. So, Hammer traveled with us. Evander traveled with us. up his guy, takes his shoes off, puts a nice pair of turf shoes on, ties up his laces. We go out to the field, and I'm next to the Godfather of Soul. I'm from Eugene, Oregon, so I'm next to the Godfather of Soul. Teach him how to take a snap from under center and run a toss, play to Mike Rojira, Heisman Trophy winner. That's crazy. You just didn't have it. You just don't have it. You just don't have it. Yeah. Dennis Hopper is hanging out with us. Jerry Jeff Walker Travis Tritt. Jerry Jeff Walker came down, married to Redskine, and wrote a song about y'all. He was so talented. He wrote a song about y'all that makes you think, you know, everybody wanted a piece of that song. Did you get to sing on that record? No, I didn't. Thank goodness. If I did, I would definitely do not play it right now. That would terrible for us. What were those, because I know the pregame locker room was madness, right? What was that like being in the pregame locker room that was similar to a nightclub, right? I wouldn't say this right here, hey, Chris. You guys understand this. It was your soundtrack. It was your soundtrack. Chris, listen to this right here, man. Seriously. In the NFL, everybody want to get serious. Right before a game, you can go to, out of 31 teams, how many teams there are now, you can go and listen, and it's quiet. Our locker room was never quiet. Pregame, when you come in there, it was blast. And I mean anything from country music to rap music, rock and roll, everything. And everybody loved it, man. It motivated everybody. Cool thing, you have folks dancing, doing anything, getting comfortable, getting ready for the game. And nobody's uptight. All the stars hanging out. All the stars hanging out, walking through the locker room. Then you have folks like me, who I put my headphones on and be sitting in the corner trying to get ready. And the music just going and going. And it was so much fun. I mean, you couldn't ask for a better scene. It wouldn't fly in today's NFL secure. And that's before the game. It was before the game. We will. And it's that times three. And listen, Chris, after the game reporters would come in and they're like, can someone turn on the music? We can't even ask the guys questions. I mean it would be that loud. I'm daresay no one touched the music. And the music played the entire time. The music was sacred for sure, man. It was sacred. And you're awesome. We had big, big boom boxes. We're the only team when we got out of the airplane. We traveled. I know. And still to this day, people talk about this team as one of the teams in Falcons history that was most connected to the city in terms of the way you guys played, the way you were boastful and brash. And like I told you earlier, Dion, you know, I look wet, but it's dry. It's very curvy. Why do y'all think y'all connected so much with the city of Atlanta? When I left the city and I hadn't used the word, but you all know the word, people said that team started swag. And I never thought about that because I never thought about swag. I just thought we had, we wore black uniforms because black wouldn't of color was an attitude. Well, that attitude got to the swag and I think Atlanta loved the swag of the way they played. You know, we didn't throw a frickin' four-yard route. We didn't go three plays without a blitz. And so it wasn't what people watched today. It's like going to Baptist Sermon. Nothing's happening, you know? We're on fire. All the time. I think he's right with the swag thing. I mean, the city was on the rise with the music industry starting to get big. The Braves had just won there. They had just started becoming the Braves that they are now and, you know, everything was missing but the football team. And then like he said, when that swag started, it started hitting us in the media and then it poured onto the field. And I mean, we had Dion Prime time. We had Showtime and Andre Ryzen with Jerry Glanver who was a big character of himself. And I mean, it just poured into it and then we were winning games. I mean, you win games, the media are going to follow, especially with all the other stuff that's going on around us. I think it was all inclusive too with all different walks of life. Everybody could identify with the Falcons, what we were doing. It was new. It was fresh. It didn't matter if you were West Coast, Redneck, Country, Person or whatever. I mean, everybody could identify with different walks of life and it made it so unique. And everybody had fun. You see on these videos, everybody's rocking and you don't see that all the time in NFL games. And it wasn't just that we were the most exciting Falcons team. We were the most exciting team in the NFL. Yeah. Exactly. And it was different because that's where we were in Houston. You know, we came here for me when I got here. At first year, we didn't win. We lost a close game. Right. That next year, we won those games. Right. So the father we lost the year before, we won. Right. So now we had his attitude and his spirit and just who he was leading the way. It opened up all that for when we got here because everything we did was a tack. We was having fun. We was working hard. You know what I mean? And like we had people from all genres of life, you know, from country-western to rap to blues to everything else to where we were able to reach everybody within the community. And you let us be ourselves. That was the good thing. That's the good thing. We all can be ourselves. I agree. And you encouraged it. Yeah. And it just came out. And that brought the swag on. What's interesting about being yourselves, offensive lineman comes up to me 20 years later at the Super Bowl. He goes, nobody had the fun that we had, but I now realize nobody worked as hard as we did or were more prepared than we were. He goes, when we didn't have you, we weren't prepared for all that stuff that was going to happen. He says, so people thought we were having fun, which we were. Yeah. But you all didn't know you were working harder than anybody. Who else played nine on seven lives? Right. But people don't know when you practice, you know, today you practice. You don't have the gear on. We've practiced the entire season with the gear. Three, four weeks, three, four weeks. Live, but no more scrimmage. But that made me better, because I was the NFL leading tackleer that year. And Derek, thanks for that. No, thank you. Thank you. But he brought a lot out of the city and brought a lot out of the west because before, you know, our team was, you know, obviously the Valpins color, you know, you got white, red and black and we wore no colors. You know, red was home and white was on the road, but it was back in black when Jerry came. It was an attitude thing. Not more Warsaw adjures than the Hellman change. It was an attitude change. That's what it was. I think the attitude change brought us from the year before, your first year, we went five and 11 to going 10 and six and eventually going to New Orleans and winning our first playoff game in 11 years. And I think that carried on to this day. You know, it helped change the culture of how the average fans in Atlanta viewed the Atlanta Falcons. And let's stick with Jerry with Coach Glenville actually because I know he changed his team and he led this unique, crazy group of guys and let's watch a video about Jerry that we made up. I've been a head coach for six years and that's why I take time to have some fun. That's why you don't take yourself seriously because nobody else is. I think the worst thing that happens to you is you think, boy, this is it. I made it and here I am. And don't have fun along the way. And one thing about Atlanta, they're like their eccentric coach, Jerry Glenville. They live on the edge. Jerry says, we make people nervous. You don't know what you're going to get with the Atlanta Falcons. Jerry Glenville, he is unique. There is no question about it. He was telling me he has caused so much distraction for his team during the regular season that when you get to the distractions of the playoff, his club is ready and very loose. 50% of them usually like me and 50% can't stand you. That sort of follows with the fans and the cities. And you know, my old rule is if you're hanging 50-50, you're better most folks. You wait your entire adult life forward. Get the feeler running down your arms into your fingers. This is what lasts all of it. Wow. I paid that, you got $50. None of that was true. This old show doesn't have to be the truth, does it? Yeah, it's got to be the truth. Oh, man, that is your show. Good night, everybody. It's funny because we adopted his attitude. He came 1990 and he started to change the culture from day one. And that 91 team reflects all that he was. I mean, we went to black. We went to 11 men only. I mean, you don't see 11 people on tackle anymore. You got guys diving over the top just to get on the tackle. And that's because he set a new standard for us. And when you set a new standard in an organization like a football team, everybody who buy in, it changes the whole culture of the team. And one of the ways you change was with the red gun offense and no routes under 22 yards. I think the quote you said was, you'd rather take something like, you rather take a fork in the eye than watch Bill wash it off a stick. I mean, that is sticking, yeah. Hey, we all laugh. You know, these offenses, in fact, somebody yesterday went to have 16 play. Three 16 play drives and no touchdowns. These two, I give them one play. We got to have a score. They got one shot. We went downtown and I watched these four or five-yard plays and they know my, if we want four or five yards, we're going to turn around and hand it to Mike Roger. We're not going to go through all this pass protection, make all these freaking calls and throw it. And he didn't like to throw anything but it wasn't about 35 yards. But he was the most accurate deep ball thrower. And when you got a guy that can throw it that deep and then you have the fastest guy playing for you, we got to be surprised. And while those two were sitting down, while they didn't sit, they'd watch these two guys try to kill you. Who wouldn't go to that game? Who wouldn't love us? It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. A lot of action, man. A lot of action. And your defense, with the pride in it, you called it the Black Wave, right? We had the Red Gun on offense and the Black Wave on defense. We tried to make it happen. It was a lot of fun. The defense was a lot of fun for us. Special teams. Special teams also. Don't forget the special teams. Hey look, space team captain, defense captain right here. And we made it happen. And we made it happen. And I like space team too because as a veteran player, normally you don't play a lot of space teams. I was on space team for 12 years, okay? You don't even see that anymore. That's what you get for not getting trapped. That's right. You get trapped and you don't cover the case. I'm like, hey man, I'm the NFL leading tackleer. I'm still on special teams. I have no idea, but I was on special teams. And we'll start up. Full time starting. So, but we took a lot of pride, man. You know, guys like myself in the sky case and there's so many guys. Don't forget Joe Fishback. Joe Fishback. Hey listen, hey look, Elbert Shelley. Elbert Shelley. Elbert main promo, right? Hey man, we had a ton of guys and we had a baseball player in our team, Brian Jordan. Our coach. Our coach never called him by his real name. Called him baseball. Hey, baseball. He pretty much had a nickname for everybody. Everybody had a nickname. So Brian Jordan would ever be known as baseball. Made it, man. And this thing, with the celebrities, you always left tickets for Elvis. What was this about? And James, We didn't do that here. In fact, we did that when we were in Houston, I think that was. In Atlanta, it's terrible because I went out to the Falcon building and they have a corner. Hall of Shame for each guy. And sitting under Jerry Glamble's Hall of Shame, it says he left tickets for Elvis every time he was in. We never did it one time. But why ruin a good story? If we're in law, two more lives, that will go on. That will go down. So it's not true? No. We did that in Houston. We were playing The New England Patriots in Memphis, pre-season game. And the halftime was dedicated to Elvis. Well, June Jones and me are driving into work. And on the radio, the guy says, they spotted Elvis in Michigan at a Burger King. And June gets me, and Joey goes, Jerry, leave him two tickets. And then, that had a life of its own. That took off. Chris, I got to add, one of the coolest things about, you know, you watch the NFL nowadays, and when the defense is on the field, the offensive guys are sitting on a bench, right? They're looking through their computer, whatever it is on the sideline, and they got a hat on, and they're chilling. Our team was so exciting to watch. When our defense was out there, we would be standing right on the sideline, watching our defense work, because we knew something was going to go down. It was going to be special or exciting, because you had Jesse the Hammer Tuggle, Scott Case, primetime Dion Sanders, you know, I mean, we had playmakers out there. And it was like, when we were on offense, they weren't sitting down. It was so fun to watch each other operate, you know? And that's what made us a great team, because not only were we watching, we were cheering for them. And we enjoyed it. I mean, we enjoyed watching the other, our defensive play, because we knew that they were trying to get 11 guys to the ball. Something big was going to go down. I got to say this about Jess. Whenever you guys scored one play, he goes, Coach, we didn't get much play. We didn't a little longer break than they said. The disadvantage of playing defense, 14, that particular kind of running the red gun, was they scored too fast. Like, we'll be on the sideline. Like, hey, man, I just got, I just been just swallowing the one, one cup of water, okay? It's had to go back on the field again. But other than that, it was a good problem to have. And the way y'all played, it made a lot of people upset. And even the way, the way y'all approached the game, from the swagger to the dancing to the throwing the throwing the ball. It was different, man. But we were having fun, man. Right. You know, and I always, I said like this, I mean, there's two things that they can do. They can either get over, or they don't. Either way, I don't care. But remember, yeah. That's the attitude we had. That's the way we played. We went out and played the way we wanted to play. And we went out and had fun doing it. Yeah. And what we did, we either made them better or we made them quick. That's it. You're going to fight, or you're going to go home like you were pumped. That's it. And I was going to say to them, talked about us, talked about us. But when we talk about you, that means a lot. I mean, you must be impressing them in some type of way. So they knew when we came to town, we were strictly business, but we bring a lot of fun with us too. But we come in the way no matter what. And I can remember, many, many times, everybody would come in and say, I'll give them credit. I'll give them credit. They've hung in there for half. Yeah. Because, Jesse, keep hitting them in the mouth. That must be it. He goes, they will fold. They will fold. That's right. And he'd say, you've got to give them credit to home for a little while. Absolutely. I was going to say because people disliked you so much that you were telling, you were telling the story about how you went to that game in Houston and you had to wear a bulletproof vest. Oh, absolutely. Hey, hey, nobody would stand by him. That's right. Wherever Jerry was, we knew he had a bulletproof vest. We were at the other end of the day. Can you explain why you had to wear a bulletproof vest? Some guy would call up, make a phone call, and they had protocol. We had, you know, we had security. And the protocol was you had to do this. If I had on that high-placed drifter jacket, they all knew they were talking to me, right? And I'll never forget June was a great coach with us. He wouldn't come near me. We were in Cleveland. And I said, June, he goes, no, no, stay there and talk to me on the phone. So now, we're going to win the game. So now, June is about a minute left, comes up and stands next to him. Out of the upper deck, comes an apple. Hits June right in the back. He falls on the ground. He goes, Jerry, they got me. There's no way you got an apple. You know, it was an apple. It was an apple. It was frozen. It was frozen. It was snowball. Yeah. And there was a pre-season game that we were talking about where you said you had 240 yards and you kept sending it up there. And 240 of you had a couple of catches. Now, this is pre-season. New contract. Now we started. New contract. Listen. So we're in the pre-season game and this is against his old team. He wanted to destroy that. Now, normally. In Houston. Normally, in the pre-season game, the starting offense, they go maybe the first series then they're done with the game. Not in Houston. No. He wanted to beat them so bad. So this is third quarter. I had 240 yards. I had three touchdowns. And he was still calling. He was still pushing the gas. He was still telling throwing deep. And I'm like, this is pre-season. We should be out, ready to go. But he was still, he's like, I want to beat them 100 yards. If I can beat them by 100 yards. 300 yards, four touchdowns, three to him. And I got a new contract after he beat you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're buying dinner tonight. All the folks in Houston, you wonder why he had on the bulletproof vest. Because he wanted to destroy them. So how was, for you, Jesse, how was Jerry different from other coaches you had? What made him so likeable? Oh, don't ask him that. I'll never get his job. Let me think of it. This will end my career. Let me see. He was a little, got a few adjectives for it. Did you hear anybody there? Barry, I've spoken. Obviously, we see that. But most of all, he's the guy that really cared about the players, I think. And also he brought that winning mentality. But he did it in a fun way. You know, I played for a lot of different head coaches, but there was nobody like Jerry. Nobody. He made it fun for us when we traveled. You know, we'll go to different places, different museum, the different cities. We just did stuff together. And we talked about how to locker room work. It was that way of practice. You know, he kept it fun, but he also, you know, you knew, you knew not to cross Jerry. I mean, we're going to do it, but we're going to do it the right way. You're going to, you're going to bust your butt. You're going to work hard. And then you're going to have fun afterwards. But what no shortcut in between because in shortcuts, you know, you can't win anyways. So it's hard work. It will take you over the hump. And that man right there showed us the way how to do it. And I appreciate that. One other team took their team picture in front of the Iwo Jima stand. That's what we're talking about. Listen, man. That's our team picture. We said, we said, if we went to say, I'm going to tell that story. I'm going to tell that story. I'm going to tell that story. We're going to take it. We're going to the Arch. We're going to DC. We're going to the Washington Monument. Wherever we went to have, like something, I mean, as a team, before we go to the hotel, right? We're on a team bus. And nobody knew where we were going. And no one ever knew. The other thing is, it all depends on what bus she was on. That's right. That's what the bus is on. That's the first bus. That's the first bus. We had a bus for fighting and a bus for not fighting. We had a bus for fighting. Oh, yeah. You want to get in the fight with someone you got on the second bus. I got to tell this story. There's two stories I'm going to tell. Number one, before the 91 season, we go down to Fat Tuesdays, right? Fat Tuesdays where they have the dryers full of different type of liquor and juices and stuff like that. All the Dakarys, yeah. Yeah, Dakarys and the whole deal. So we go down to Fat Tuesdays. Fat Tuesdays on Friday. On Friday. That's it. Two buses down there. We all get, we all get liquored up pretty good. Whole team. Whole team. Now you got to understand, this was mandatory. You had to go. You had to go. You had to go. When was this? Pre-season. Pre-season. Pre-season. Tell them what happened. So anyways, there's two buses. This is crazy. The first bus is maybe some more mellow folks. And the second bus, John Rady's on there and some other dudes, one of our linemen. Wow. So there were some fights. There were some fisticuffs that went down on the second bus. Meanwhile, Andre Reisen and I missed the buses back. We're walking down downtown Buckhead. Dre's got like three drinks from Fat Tuesdays on the show. I'm double-fisted with two. We're going out clubbing all night long. We roll in in a taxi cab about 2 a.m., 3 a.m. in the morning. And he's loving the fact that we weren't there, that we missed it, that we showed up. He encouraged it. I mean, it was unique. He encouraged it. One thing about Fat Tuesdays. And it was pre-season. And it was pre-season. And the next day's practice was 7 a.m. Oh, it was. It was. Didn't care what you did at Fat Tuesdays. We were hitting you at 7 a.m. It was awesome. The other story I got to tell, we got to D.C. to play in the division around it. And Washington ended up winning the Super Bowl that year. And so we get there and it's sleeting and cold and nasty. And it was the worst weather game I ever played in that next Sunday. So we fly in and we all want to go to the hotel. It's cold. And Jamie Dukes and Houston Hoover a couple of our linemen. They got fur coats on and Albert Shelley has his leather on and everything. And so we're out there standing. We go to the Washington Monument and the Vietnam Monument than the Hiroshima Monument and Leslie Visser and CBS and the whole cruise out there doing a film story on us. And we're all standing in front of there with the butts off saying hey man can we get back to the hotel. But you taught us you took us to some history which was a national story covered by Leslie Visser CBS. And those are the things that made you unique and special. We got off the bus. We're going to play in Washington and you guys probably we're not we get off the bus at the Vietnam wall. And there's veterans and wheelchairs from Chicago. We don't tell anybody where we're going. And I said to the veteran goes we're all waiting here for your Falcon team. And I goes how in the hell did you know we were coming? And the Vietnam veteran looked at me and goes because you're the Falcons. I knew you'd be here. That's awesome man. And there's never been a team like that. 1991 line of Falcons California State Champs. We had beaten every single team on the West Coast. You got all these guys down in this it's a free fall. Down in the corner batted they fight touchdown.