The Scribe Session podcast series catching up with former Bengals from the 90s and early 2000s concludes this week with the sixth and final edition to see what they are up to now, hear stories from old days, opinions on what went wrong (and occasionally right) as well as the challenges in the changing landscape of post-football life.
This week I chat with offensive lineman Joe Walter. A 1985 Cincinnati draft pick he spent his entire 12-year career with the Bengals amassing 166 games played and 136 starts. He was a starter at guard for the 1988 AFC Championship team and hung around through the bottom falling out into the mid-90s.
These days he works as a Vice President at Forcht Bank in Kentucky.
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Walter discusses his transition from football into the banking world, the reaction when Sam Wyche began installing his revolutionary offense and, of course, how he came up with the sandwich that bears his name at Izzy's.
Mostly notably though, Walter discusses why the back end of his career ended up shrouded with losses and the frustration and sadness watching those great teams from 80s quickly dismantled.
In answering a question many still ask today regarding Dave Shula, Walter offers when he believes the young, inexperienced head coach lost control of the team.
"He lost the team, I would say, from the get-go. The very first meeting that we had you had those (overhead projectors), he was sweating so bad and so nervous that everything was wiped off before you could see what it was. So right then you lose your guys because you see your head guy that nervous. What's that telling you? How's he going to run the club? What's he going to be like in a stressful situation? Dave was a great guy, a really good guy. He would talk to me quite a bit, call me up, have me come in the office, talk things through me, I was the old head. But there was no way he was going to win. He was done before he even got started."
Walter offers this and much more about Shula, suspicions the coaching staff was plotting against the head coach in his later years, the significance of this box score, discusses the good guys that graced the locker room -- and spills those who weren't so good. Regardless, a fantastic 30-minute look inside the transition from Super Bowl to super bad. Keep an eye out next Thursday as the series will offer a best-of podcast for those of you slackers who haven't been paying attention. I'll pick out the best parts of each of the six throwback podcasts and splice them together for you. Clip Show!
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