BENGALS Wyche remembers no-huddle in 1988

The former Cincinnati coach used it to get to the Super Bowl.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- The no-huddle. The sugar huddle. The walk-by huddle. The sideline huddle. Sam Wyche used them all in a fastbreak offense that took the Bengals to the Super Bowl in the 1988 season.
Seventeen years later, Wyche's former team is at it again, borrowing his approach and making another playoff run with Carson Palmer picking up where Boomer Esiason left off.
From afar, Wyche is delighted by what he sees.
"Carson Palmer is a terrific quarterback," the Buffalo Bills quarterbacks coach said Tuesday. "Boomer Esiason was unbelievably good and smart and able to handle the no-huddle. The one thing about not huddling up, not going back into that little caucus and talking about what you're going to do next between plays, is that you better have 11 smart guys on the field.
"We did then and they do now. The results are a lot of fun on Sunday."
Things haven't been this much fun in Cincinnati since Wyche was tinkering with the offense and tweaking the league.
Clinched division title
The Bengals (11-3) have clinched their first division title since Wyche was the head coach in 1990. He lasted one more year in Cincinnati, then had a falling out with owner Mike Brown after a 3-13 finish in 1991.
That was the beginning of one of the longest slumps in NFL history -- 14 straight years without a winning record. The Bengals have finally ended it with their best showing since 1988, when Wyche's team went 12-4 on its way to the Super Bowl.
The Bengals can reach the 12-win mark Sunday against Buffalo (4-10) in a game that amounts to a homecoming for Wyche. His son and grandchildren live in Cincinnati, where he still feels at home.
The town is decked out in orange and black for the first time since Wyche was running the show -- before some of today's high school students were born.
"The way you put that is, that was when buggy whips were one of the best sellers at the department stores," Wyche joked, during a conference call with Cincinnati writers. "It wasn't quite that long."
Forced league changes
Maybe not. But a lot of today's fans don't even remember that it was Wyche who forced the league to set the parameters for today's no-huddle offenses.
His mad-scientist approach to speeding up the game drew complaints from opponents and forced the NFL to rewrite its rules. The Bengals were banned from using their no-huddle less than two hours before the 1988 AFC title game, a 21-10 victory over Buffalo.
"We just gave up the privacy of the huddle and changed the tempo of the game," Wyche said. "Then when the crowds got loud on the road, we changed it to the walk-by huddle and the sugar huddle and, during timeouts, the sideline huddle. It just made everybody in every (NFL) office in New York mad."
Jim Kelly and the Bills took the no-huddle to a new level in the 1990s, after the league changed the rules. Peyton Manning and the Colts, and now Palmer and the Bengals, are using it as staples of their offense today.
But back in the 1980s, it raised a ruckus.
"At the beginning of the no-huddle, we went through all kinds of stuff with the league," he said. "Everything from the interpretation of the rules would be changed from week to week."
The league eventually decided that if an offense substituted players, the defense would be allowed to do the same. If the offense keeps the same 11 on the field and lines up fast, the defense is at risk if it tries to change.