Among the many qualities Atlanta Falcons President Rich McKay appreciated about his famous father, a legendary college football coach, was his unwillingness to walk away from difficult situations.
“Finish the drill, that’s what he believed,” McKay said of his late father, John, who won four national championships at USC during a coaching tenure that lasted from 1960 to ’75.
John McKay was coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1976 and ’77 when the expansion team lost its first 26 games. He might have felt the urge to bail out, but didn’t, and that franchise went on to reach the playoffs three times before he retired in 1984, and advanced to the NFC championship game in 1979.