Do You Love Football?! (23 page)

I also knew it would be a great challenge to earn his respect.

He was a twenty-year NFL line coach. He had come from the Jets. He had worked with Bill Parcells. And considering that I came from an offensive background that might have been different from what he had been doing for the better part of his career up to that point, I'm sure he was looking at me with some questions. Most people who meet me for the first time hell, even most people who know me-usually look at me with a raised eyebrow anyhow. But I wanted to prove to Bill that I could do this job and I was eager to work with him because of his past experiences. It's funny how this business works. The Jets' offensive coordinator, Paul Hackett, whom I knew from my one season at Pitt, filled me in on what a superb coach Bill was, and it really helped me in dealing with him initially.

There were probably some defensive coaches on that Buccaneer staff who wanted to go with Tony to Indianapolis, so I had to sell myself to guys like Rod Marinelli, who coached the defensive line; Joe Barry, who coached the linebackers; Mike Tomlin, who coached the defensive backs. These are tremendous coaches and they were loyal. The defense they had put together was awesome. The one-gap system they use is, philosophically, a defense that I believe in wholeheartedly. You have four linemen, you get the hat in the crack and penetrate, disrupt, as opposed to a two-gap, "34" type of approach where you have three linemen and there is more reading and reacting. Both ways are effective, but I was from more of a one-gap lineage.

"I want this defense," I told each member of that defensive staff. "I don't want you to go. Please give me an opportunity to work with you."

Fortunately for me, they all decided to stay. I put a lot of trust in that defensive staff. I delegated a lot to them because I had great confidence in their abilities, and I let them know that.

Through all the success I have witnessed on five NFL teams, the common thread is the strength of the assistant coaches. The head coach gets a lot of credit or blame when you win and lose, but the assistant coaches are critically important, and the group of coaches we had in Tampa was second to none.

After putting the coaching staff together, I met the players. I had to sell myself to them, too. A lot of them live in Tampa and some were around the office at that time. One of the first players I sat with was Derrick Brooks. He probably thought I was a weirdo because for the most part I just stared at him. I almost couldn't believe that I was going to have the chance to coach a team that had one of the greatest linebackers in the game. I couldn't wait to join forces with Derrick and John Lynch, the outstanding veteran safety; Warren Sapp, the best defensive tackle in the league; Simeon Rice, the game's best pass rusher; and Ronde Barber, a true shutdown corner if I ever saw one.

Lynch was one of the first Bucs players I contacted after I got the job. I called him at his offseason home in Del Mar, California. I couldn't wait to talk with him. I knew John was one of the leaders of that defense. I figured the only thing he knew about me was my reputation as an offensive guy and that he and the other guys on defense might assume that I wouldn't pay a whole lot of attention to them in practice. I wanted John and the rest of the defense to know what I was about. That was why, after we exchanged the usual pleasantries, I said, "Enough of the bullshit. I'm looking forward to that first minicamp when you walk down to that bubble on the weak side and I buzz a bleeping slant right by the back of your head. Enjoy your condo out there by San Diego, John. Relax. Go to the beach. We're going to be in here in working. We're programming our robots to defeat you."

I knew I had to earn their respect over a period of time, that I wasn't going to truly earn it in a fifteen-, twenty-, thirty-minute meeting. There was some hostility over the circumstances that created the head coaching vacancy there in the first place. The players loved Tony, and it was easy to understand why. He is a tremendous coach and a great person. That was a very sensitive locker room. Those guys had been through a lot, seeing all the reports in the media that Bill Parcells was going to be their coach. Then it was supposed to be Steve Mariucci. Now it's Jon Gruden? The search had gone on for a while and it was tough on them. I knew I had my hands full, but I also knew I had the support I needed from Monte Kiffin, Rod Marinelli and Bill Muir, to name a few.

At our first team meeting in the offseason I told the players, "I've got some big shoes to fill. You guys are on the brink of being a great football team. We've got to finish what we've started here, and I need your support. I need the veteran players . . . Derrick and Warren and John and Brad Johnson and Keyshawn Johnson . . . I need you guys to believe and trust in this program I'm going to implement here. I'm going to ask a lot of you guys.

"I'm going to be myself. I'm not like Coach Dungy. I'm going to be who I am and I'm going to try to earn your respect. But remember: Respect's a two-way street. While I'm trying to earn your respect, you've got to also work to earn mine.

"Tony's done a great job here and he's handed me the torch.

I don't know how I got here, but I'm here. We've got a lot in common, men. I have some controversy following me, too. But I know you guys will like this program. I know you'll benefit from it. I've seen it work, guys, and together we can do this."

I also thought it was important to instill a sense of pride in the history of the Buccaneer franchise, which until recently wasn't all that illustrious for the most part. This was a team that went through some very humiliating times as an expansion franchise in the mid-1970s, going 0-14 and 2-12 in its first two seasons. Still, one of the great lessons from my Raider experience was the importance of promoting a family atmosphere around an organization, of making the former players-the guys who had blazed a hard trail-feel like they were still very much part of what the team was doing. I thought it was important that they knew they were very much appreciated even though they might not have always felt that that was the case. The fact my dad had coached and scouted for the Bucs in the 1980s gave me a special, personal bond-separate from what I now have as the coach of the team-that will stay with me my whole life.

So copying the idea of those "legends dinners" that we had in Oakland, I organized a private party for former Bucs' players.

We had two of the quarterbacks-the great Doug Williams, along with Parnell Dickinson. We had Hall-of-Fame defensive end Lee Roy Selmon, as well as defensive linemen Brad Culpepper and John Cannon. We had tight end Jimmie Giles, defensive back Mark "Captain Crunch" Cotney, linebackers Richard "Batman" Wood and Scot Brantley and receivers Lawrence Dawsey and Kevin House.

It was our way of letting them know that we're proud of them. And I'll admit that, selfishly, I wanted to be reunited with some of these guys and get to meet the ones I didn't know, just like I wanted to meet those former Raider greats.

The first time I saw our defense on the grass in practice I knew it was good enough to take us to a Super Bowl. I take a lot of pride in coaching offense. Bill Muir does, too. We have a lot of formations. We have a lot of different schemes-runs, passes, no-huddle, trickery, whatever you want to do-and this defense was able to stop all of it. It is a very unforgiving defense. I knew that we could be just an absolutely unstoppable defensive team as long as we kept improving on offense and gave them hope that we could match their intensity, that we could feed off each other, that we could attack on offense as well as on defense. We wanted the defense to believe that if it would fight to get us the ball back, we were going to score.

I also had looked at a lot of the Buccaneers' defensive tape from 2001, paying particularly close attention to the turnovers.

They had dropped about four or five interceptions, and three or four of them clearly would have been for touchdowns. They could have scored two or three more touchdowns on fumble recoveries. They ended up with two touchdowns on interception returns for the whole 2001 season, but the total should have been much higher.

"You should have had nine touchdowns," I said. "Not two or three, nine! When they throw it to you, catch it and run it back for a touchdown. When you've got a chance to scoop that fumble, run it in. We rush the passer, we create havoc, we get our hands on balls. We can score nine touchdowns. Score!

Don't just get the turnover. Score! Nine touchdowns!"

The players were looking at me like I was crazy.

"Nine touchdowns?"

In our second game of the season, at Baltimore, Brooks returned an interception ninety-seven yards for a touchdown. A week later he scored again, on a thirty-nine-yard interception return against St. Louis. A week after that, Shelton Quarles had a twenty-five-yard interception return for a touchdown against Cincinnati. Three weeks, three defensive touchdowns. Now the players started talking about it. They began saying, "We're going to score on defense! We're going to score nine touchdowns!"

Whenever the other team got the ball, our defense wasn't just thinking about keeping the offense out of the end zone. It was thinking about how it was going to produce points.

When Dwight Smith returned his second interception for a touchdown with two seconds left in Super Bowl XXXVII, that was the ninth time in the season our defense reached the end zone. One of the first guys to come up to me on the sidelines was Warren Sapp.

"You wanted nine?" he yelled. "You got nine!"

The thing you have to understand about Warren is that when it's all said and done, he just loves football. He loves to compete. He's relentless as hell. And he's a smart guy.

He's got a personality that never quits, a rolling ball of butcher knives every day. Every day is the same. Now, he's happier on some days than he is on others, but even when he's not a really happy guy, his motor is still going. He's in the left lane going ninety-nine miles an hour every single day. He sets the tempo. I love him.

What other player on that team-or in the NFL, for that matter-would come up with the idea of putting his head coach through a rookie-hazing ritual? You guessed it. Number ninety-nine. The only rookie hazing we do on the Bucs is make the top draft pick buy breakfast for the entire team the morning of the first home game of the regular season. We're not talking about some doughnuts and coffee. It's supposed to be a nice spread, prepared by a local restaurant, to the tune of a couple of thousand dollars. Sure enough, we were in a meeting before our home opener against New Orleans when Sapp looked right at me and said, "You're buying breakfast for the first two home games because you're our top draft choice this year and next year."

"You've got a point there, Warren," I said. "But I'm only doing it once because you only get drafted once, you know what I mean?"

Talk about a versatile athlete. We like to use Warren as a tight end in goal-line situations, not just because he's big and has great blocking ability but also because he can catch the ball.

The guy has great hands. He was an All-American, all-world tight end in high school. Another reason I like having Warren in on goal line is that he's a detail guy. He gets off the ball on time.

He's instinctive. He's physical. To have Warren and our regular tight ends, Ken Dilger and Rickey Dudley, on the field at the same time helps us.

One thing I want to make clear about Warren Sapp is that he is a legitimate football player. There is nothing dirty about Warren Sapp. I bring that up because in November he found himself in the middle of a controversy that seemed to put that in question. We were playing the Packers at home. Brian Kelly had intercepted a pass from Brett Favre and was on his way to the end zone when Warren hit Chad Clifton, a tackle for the Packers, so hard on a block that Chad ended up in the hospital with a serious hip injury.

After the game, as both teams were heading for their locker rooms, there was a confrontation between Packers coach Mike Sherman and Warren right in the middle of the field. We had come from behind for a huge win that night over a team we were fighting for home-field advantage in the playoffs. I didn't even know what happened until after I got to our locker room, but Mike and Warren ended up having words.

I didn't like that. I didn't like the way it portrayed Warren.

Warren is a great football player. He plays the game hard, every down, and he plays it legally.

You never have to tell Warren or Brooks or Lynch or any of the guys on our defense to run to the ball or finish the play. It's hot as hell at our training camp in Orlando. I see people in the stands literally melting in pools of sweat. And here are these three-hundred-pound guys-with Sapp and fellow heavyweight Anthony Mc Farland leading the way, along with Simeon Rice-talking crap, talking trash, calling me "Blondie" and "Chucky" and "Ducky." They're picking up our audibles, saying, "Oh, no, not that one again." Then they run to the exact place they need to be to stop a play. They're kicking our asses on offense and they're loving it.

Of course, I do my share of agitating. I'll start off a practice by saying, "We're going to perform surgery today on Derrick Brooks. We're going to go after his ass." The first day of training camp we had a nine-on-seven drill. Usually every play in nine-on-seven is a run. There aren't any receivers on the field, so the quarterback is handing the ball off and you're running a counter or a gap play or a zone play. The defense knows that a run is coming. Everyone watching knows that a run is coming.

Well, on our first nine-on-seven play of camp, Lynch came down on the weak side, looking for a handoff. Instead, Shaun King kept it on a naked bootleg. He ran for thirty yards. Lynch was just livid.

Lynch yelled at me, "That's a bunch of crap!"

"Yeah, Michael Vick's not going to run any nakeds against you and your lack of containment, is he?" I yelled back at him sarcastically. "No, he's not going to run eighty yards downfield.

He's not going to run for three hundred yards on your ass. Do you think we should practice trying to stop some of those runs?"

That pissed off all our defensive guys. I've made it my mission to piss them off every day since because that's my way of challenging them, of keeping myself involved with what they're doing. Whenever we get a first down in practice, I'm yelling, "Beautiful! Keep after 'em! Keep ripping their ass!" I want our defenders to come out every day in practice looking to shut me up.