Long before he became a celebrated sports broadcaster, Bob Trumpy redefined the tight end position. A seemingly undersized 12th-round pick in the Cincinnati Bengals’ inaugural 1968 draft, Trumpy was so slight that he schemed with the team’s equipment manager to hide weights on his body for his first training camp weigh-in.
Any concerns about his size were quickly erased. Trumpy scored the franchise’s first-ever touchdown on a 58-yard pass from quarterback John Stofa in their debut game. His impact was so immediate that, according to team president Mike Brown, the perennial AFL powerhouse Kansas City Chiefs tried to trade for him during his rookie season.
Under the guidance of head coach Paul Brown and assistant Bill Walsh, Trumpy became a central figure in the burgeoning “West Coast” offense. Breaking from convention, they frequently deployed him as a wide receiver. “That’s what I was the first six years of my career,” Trumpy once said. “Bill Walsh split me out a lot of the time.”
The strategy paid off, creating a “matchup nightmare” for defenses. “He was too quick for linebackers. Too big for safeties,” analyst Dave Lapham recalled. “Tough. Reliable. And he was an underrated blocker.” Trumpy still holds the Bengals’ tight end records for touchdowns (35) and yards per catch (15.4). From 1968 to 1974, only one NFL tight end scored more touchdowns, and only one had a higher yards-per-catch average.
One of his most memorable plays was a staple of Paul Brown’s playbook: the double pass. In a driving November rain at Riverfront Stadium during his final season in 1977, Trumpy caught a 29-yard double-flanker reverse pass to defeat the Miami Dolphins and help eliminate them from the playoffs. The play haunted Dolphins coach Don Shula for years. “For 10 to 15 years after that, whenever Shula would see me, he would swear and shake his head and say, ‘Trumpy, the rain and that [bleep] double pass,'” Trumpy recalled.
After his playing days, Trumpy embarked on an equally influential career in media, becoming a role model for broadcasters like Lance McAlister. “If it wasn’t for guys like Trump… I wouldn’t be here today,” McAlister said in 2014.
While covering golf for television, he was at the center of a legendary moment during the 1993 Ryder Cup in England. Standing on the 15th fairway with American golfer Raymond Floyd, they heard a massive, sustained roar from the 14th green.
“Raymond came running over to me and said, ‘Who was up first?’ I told him, ‘(Nick) Faldo,'” Trumpy said. “Raymond said, ‘It was a hole-in-one, wasn’t it?’ It was. I can still feel the chills. Just the fact that he was so into it, and I was the one telling him what happened.”
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