It’s a Buccaneers Christmas: 12 Naughty Moments in Bucs History

2. Winless 0-14 Inaugural Season

The year is 1976 and the Buccaneers have just been awarded to the city of Tampa as an expansion team in the NFL. John McKay has just been recruited as the first ever head coach of the franchise and new fans everywhere are stoked to see how the Bucs will do in a league that now has over ten years under it’s belt after the merger.

But the Buccaneers franchise set the tone for how it would perform all the way up to today. Every Bucs game we watch is a hit or miss affair and the first season was the worst miss the team has had. I mean, does it get any worse than not winning a game?

McKay was heavily criticized for relying too much on his USC playbook, and that was reflected in the Buccaneers learning a valuable lesson: college playbooks don’t work in the NFL. The ’76 team is widely recognized as one of the worst teams in the history of the NFL, as they were shut out four times and only scored 125 points the entire season while allowing 412 points.

That’s an average of just over 8 points per game, meaning Tampa got outscored on a weekly basis 30-7.

They became the fodder of late night television jokes, with fans soon calling for McKay to be thrown in the Bay. Johnny Carson told the Bucs they should go for zero and McKay famously quipped that he’s in favor of his team’s execution. The 0-14 record stood until the 2008 Detroit Lions went two extra games without winning a single one.