0301270275
DETROIT FREE PRESS
030127
Monday, January 27, 2003
METRO FINAL CHASER
1D
Photo LENNY IGNELZI/Associated Press
Tampa Bay tackle Roman Oben hoists coach Jon Gruden in celebration of the
Buccaneers' first Super Bowl victory.
MITCH ALBOM FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Copyright (c) 2003, Detroit Free Press
BUCS FINALLY SUPER, BUT IS ALL RIGHT WITH WORLD?
SAN DIEGO -- We can all retire now. Tampa Bay has won a Super Bowl. The Red
Sea has parted, elephants can fly, insurance companies are cutting their rates
in half, and Michael Jackson will win Man of the Year. A franchise that once
dressed like a Creamsicle was draped Sunday night in an NFL championship,
having gutted the Oakland Raiders the way a hungry bear guts a fish.
They blitzed. They sacked. They intercepted. They went home with a trophy.
Somebody check for tire marks. This wasn't a game, it was a runover, a monster
truck show with a Buccaneer driving. I'm still waiting for the Oakland Raiders
and their No. 1-ranked offense to actually, you know, play some football. They
were shut up, shut down, and, when it counted, shut out. And it only proves
what nobody wants to hear: Tough defense beats flashy offense almost every
time.
And when it does, it's ugly.
Oh, yes, this was an ugly Super Bowl. The first half was like watching a
nervous kid take his driving test. Stop. Start. Three turnovers. Three sacks.
If you listened carefully, you could hear fans saying, "What time does Shania
Twain come on?"
The second half wasn't much better -- unless you like runaways. The Bucs
disrupted Oakland's rhythm like a dancer knocking over the drum set. They
sacked again. Intercepted again. Scored again. Tampa was so dominant, that
after a while it was embarrassing, these supposedly mighty Raiders looking
like kids trying to rob a bank with squirt guns.
Their final memory will be a recurring nightmare, cornerback Dwight Smith
taking another interception -- the Bucs' fifth of the game -- all the way for
a touchdown. Forty-eight points? By the Buccaneers?
That's what happens when a defense is faster than an offense. Oakland's
offensive line couldn't hold the rushing tide of Tampa Bay defenders. Rich
Gannon couldn't fool the Tampa Bay defensive backs, and the Raiders'
point-scoring machine sputtered, spit and went up in smoke.
In truth, the most interesting thing to happen to the Raiders happened before
the coin was tossed. Their starting center, a Pro Bowl player named Barret
Robbins, was sent home after he didn't show for Saturday's practice. He
couldn't be found until that evening. There were rumors of him being in
Tijuana, Mexico, of being too inebriated to check in, of being in the
hospital. Maybe in the old days this would have been "Raider mystique." But
when your veteran quarterback is as straight as an accountant and your star
receivers are aging gentlemen, all it does is mess things up.
"He did it to himself," said Raiders running back Tyrone Wheatley.
But when the man snapping the ball disappears on game day, things get rattled.
Not that the Raiders needed help in that department. From the start it was
clear that all those AFC defenses they peppered with dinky passes were no
match for the swift smash of Tampa Bay. Gannon, for most of the game, couldn't
do anything. I mean nothing. He was chased and erased. All season, he tacked
pinball-like numbers on the opposition.
On Sunday, he went "tilt."
"I was watching TV this week and seeing experts predict the MVPs," said safety
Dexter Jackson, who won that award with two of Tampa's five interceptions. "We
knew Gannon threw a lot of passes. I told my friends, 'I can be MVP of this
thing if we get some picks.'
"I think this defense is one of the best of all time."
Well, it was certainly the best of the 2002-03 season. How can you describe
the total domination Sunday? Think of Oakland as a mosquito and Tampa as a big
can of Raid.
That was the Super Bowl.
Consider this: Oakland's first five possessions ended with a sack, a sack, a
deflected pass and two interceptions. And, like the Baltimore Ravens two years
ago, Tampa's defense was so good, it lifted the offense. So here was
quarterback Brad Johnson, on the money, and receiver Joe Jurevicius catching
big passes, and Michael Pittman, maybe the least known name on an unknown
offense, gaining over 100 yards and looking more like Marcus Allen than any of
the Raiders.
The Bucs marched through Oakland's exhausted defense like, well, like Oakland
used to march through everyone else. And finally, when Oakland coughed up its
final gasp, pulling to within 13 points, the Tampa offense converted a crucial
third down, scored two touchdowns on interception returns, and next thing you
know, Johnson was a Super Bowl-winning quarterback, and Warren Sapp, the
league's biggest talker without a title, had a ring to match his zing.
Heaven help us all.
"We didn't really plan on shutting them down completely," Sapp said afterward,
smiling broadly. "But that's what we did. We do what we do!"
How strange is this? Tampa Bay, Super Bowl champs? Remember, this was the
expansion team to end all expansion teams. This was a franchise that lost its
first 26 games, a franchise that saw Bo Jackson, its No. 1 pick, say "No
thanks, I'd rather play baseball," a franchise that was known for years as
"The Yuccaneers."
Heck, as late as last February, Tampa Bay was still embarrassing itself with a
vacant head coaching office, having fired Tony Dungy, only to see one
candidate after another sink by circumstance. In the end, the Bucs owners had
to pay $8 million and four draft picks just to GET a coach.
But they got the right one.
Jon Gruden, Oakland's ex, did what Dungy couldn't -- namely, get the team to
score some points -- and the combination of a fresh face and fresh fire lifted
this club over the final hurdle.
"The guy is contagious," Johnson said of his coach. "We love playing football
for him so much, we want to play through January and February and up to
mini-camp."
Good luck trying to find an opponent.
So that's that. Season ends. And we can quit now. We've seen it all. Dogs can
talk. It snows at the equator. Ice cream has no calories. And for the next 12
months, we'll be saying "The World Champion Tampa Bay Bucs." Could anything in
this world be stranger?
Well. Maybe one thing. "World Champion Detroit Lions."
But I said this world.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Catch "The Mitch
Albom Show" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760).
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FOOTBALL;SUPER BOWL;ANALYSIS