Bob Lutz: Kansas native Bruce DeHaven hopes fifth Super Bowl is a charm

Bruce DeHaven had a role in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary “Four Falls of Buffalo,” which came out last month and detailed, in agonizing detail, the Bills’ four Super Bowl losses from 1991-94.

DeHaven, who is from the southwest Kansas town of Trousdale and coached for five years at Southeast during the Golden Buffaloes’ dynasty from the mid- to late-1970s, was Buffalo’s special teams coach in those days.

One Super Bowl loss begot another, until there were four in a row. And in the first, Super Bowl XXV, a missed 47-yard field-goal attempt by Scott Norwood cost the Bills a win over the New York Giants.

“Because of my relationship with Scotty, they wanted to interview me for that documentary,” DeHaven said. “When we adopted our son, we named him after Scott. We’ve been in touch down through the years and I had so much respect for how well he handled himself after that ballgame.”

Losing a Super Bowl is brutal, DeHaven said, no matter how much success a team has had leading up to the game.

Now he’s getting another chance as special teams coach of the Carolina Panthers. DeHaven, 67, has been in the NFL since joining the Bills in 1987. He has also spent time with San Francisco, Dallas and Seattle.

“It’s like I tell the guys, it’s a great experience going to a Super Bowl,” DeHaven said. “You just won the conference championship, you have all the hoopla and the media. But if you lose this ballgame, it’s not a good experience at all. You have almost no remembrance of the Super Bowl being a good thing. You don’t want to talk about it, think about it, reminisce about it — it’s just such an incredible difference when you don’t win.”

DeHaven, who played football at Southwestern College in Winfield, joined Jim Davie’s staff at Southeast in 1974 and the Buffaloes would go on to win three Class 5A championships and finish second twice in the five years he was there.

He calls that coaching staff — which included Dennis Cavalier, John Dawkins, Harold Brandenburg, Dan Johnson and Billy Means — a group of all-stars.

“It seems like just yesterday that we were traveling around Wichita in a little yellow school bus trying to beat those other City League teams,” DeHaven said. “What a great bunch of players and coaches we had. I’ve been in the NFL a long time and there isn’t one of those guys that couldn’t have coached in this league.”

Southeast was 52-4 during DeHaven’s tenure, during which he was the coach of the JV team that was 38-0.

“That’s a good time,” DeHaven said. “You could hardly write a story like that.”

DeHaven started his college coaching career at Kansas in 1979, coaching offensive linemen and defensive backs. He first became a special teams coach with the USFL’s New Jersey Generals in 1983 and has been doing it ever since.

DeHaven was diagnosed with prostate cancer last summer, but doesn’t like to talk about his illness. He says he’s doing fine and leaves it at that. And he has been well enough to coach all season.

“I love this team we have in Carolina, it’s absolutely one of my favorite teams,” DeHaven said. “These guys just have so much fun. It’s almost like coaching one of those high school teams at Southeast. We’ve been 23-1 here over the last year and a half and when you win like this it’s almost like being around a bunch of high school times. They like hanging out together, b

eing around one another.”

And while Carolina quarterback Cam Newton carries around a lightning rod, DeHaven says Newton is the Panthers’ bolt of lightning.

“Listen, there’s no controversy about Cam Newton in our locker room,” DeHaven said. “There might be outside of this organization, but not in Charlotte. When it comes to practice, Cam is like a fifth-grader who has been cooped up in class all day and gets to go out for recess.

“He’s imparted that same kind of enthusiasm on our whole team. There’s no question he’s our leader and everybody follows him. He is smart, tough and incredibility athletic. Plus, he’s bigger than almost all of the guys he’s playing against. I cannot say enough good things about Cam Newton.”

DeHaven said he returns to Kansas every summer to get together with guys he went to college with in Winfield. They play golf and tell stories.

“So many lies that we’re starting to believe them now,” he said.

Growing up in a small Kansas town, he said, helped teach him values. And opened up his world to possibilities.

He not only played sports, but he was in the student council, played in the band, sang in the choir and performed in the school play.

“You knew everybody in that community and everybody looked out for everybody else,” he said. “There were probably a couple of hundred people and I was in the last graduating class for the high school.”

Football has allowed DeHaven opportunities he couldn’t have imagined. Near the top of that list is coaching in five Super Bowls.

“I’ve never gone back and watched the replays of any of those games with the Bills,” he said. “I ran through game tape, maybe, just to see what happened and then I put it away. The memories are just too hard

“But enough years have gone by now that it makes it maybe a little easier to talk about. In a lot of ways, going to four Super Bowls — even if you lost them all — is a bigger accomplishment than going to one, winning it and never getting back.”

DeHaven has another chance Sunday. A fifth chance. He can’t wait.

This story was originally published February 4, 2016 at 2:24 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Kansas native Bruce DeHaven hopes fifth Super Bowl is a charm."