Do You Love Football?! (25 page)

We wanted them to play football like they were capable of playing it. We needed that defense to help our offense by establishing good field position and creating turnovers. We needed those defensive guys to help us get our first win. As horrific as we played against the Saints, we were down 20-0 with about five minutes left, and Brad took us down on an impressive two-minute drive to make it 20-7. The defense got us the ball back again and our great kicker, Martin Gramatica, tied it at the end of regulation to force overtime. That told the defense to keep fighting, keep playing, keep working to get the ball back because the offense was going to do something with it.

In week two we shut out the Ravens 25-0. Even though we didn't score an offensive touchdown, we played very well offensively, holding the ball for more than thirty-five minutes. We had three great, long drives. We took the crowd out of it. We didn't have a turnover. Combine that with a dominant defensive performance, and that's a pretty unbeatable combination.

There wasn't a whole lot to say about our 20-10 loss in Philadelphia on October 20. The Eagles beat us, ending our winning streak at five and extending the Buccaneers' Vet losing streak to three. But it wasn't as if we had played our best football. We gave up a long touchdown pass just before halftime.

We had a season-low 207 yards of offense. Brad Johnson was sacked six times and had to leave the game with a rib injury in the fourth quarter. Yet with Rob Johnson at quarterback, we had a goal-line situation with four minutes left and we missed a short field goal.

Regardless of how poorly we played or our team's continued lack of success in Philly, it was too early to get discouraged. We didn't start getting into thoughts like Gee, we lost our chance to have a bye in the playoffs. We lost our chance to have home field advantage. I just knew this: We weren't going to go anywhere if we didn't pick it up on offense. We had to play much better offensively just to get to the playoffs, let alone win in them. I was more concerned with getting our act together and winning the NFC South just for a chance to make the post-season than I was about anything else.

We did go on to win our next four games. Although we never really took off and became the most prolific scoring machine, we averaged almost twenty-seven points a game in Brad's last six starts of the regular season. Not coincidentally, our defense played great the rest of the season and wound up ranking first in the NFL. We won our division with a 12-4 record, best in franchise history. We were proud of that, but I knew that there was a lot more for us to accomplish.

The lone benefit to having the record we did is that it gives you a bye in the first round. For the players, it's a chance to rest and heal. As coaches, you try to take advantage of that extra time by projecting which team you're going to face in the next round and preparing accordingly.

The Packers were playing Atlanta at home in their wild-card game. Naturally the Packers were the favorite because the Falcons were going from their nice, cozy dome to snowy and cold Lambeau Field, where the Packers had never lost a playoff game. At the same time, we knew the Falcons had the firepower to beat the Packers, because they should have beaten them at Lambeau in the season-opening game. We decided to play the percentages and started looking at a little Green Bay tape. Sure enough, Atlanta beat the Packers, meaning we would play San Francisco or the Giants, and those teams weren't going to face each other until the next day. After the Giants jumped out on top and looked like they were going to roll to victory, we started watching Giants tape. All of a sudden Jeff Garcia got hot and led San Francisco to a victory that came down to a botched field goal by the Giants, and we're starting all over again with 49ers tape. We never really got the advantage of a good extra night or night and a half of preparation.

We knew San Francisco had just been through an emotional, exhausting, come-from-behind 39-38 win over the Giants.

Meanwhile, we were feeling fresh. Brad Johnson had missed the last two regular-season games with a right lower-back contusion. We needed the bye to get him well. We felt good about our plan.

We put together one of our most convincing games of the year to beat the 49ers 31-6. Being able to go back to Brad really gave our team a lot of juice. When the other players saw him taking snaps in pregame warm-ups in our stadium, they became very confident because they had seen how well the offense had performed during his last six starts. We scored touchdowns on three consecutive possessions to build a 28-6 halftime lead. Our defense played great that day as well, intercepting Garcia three times and forcing him to fumble once.

With the Eagles beating Atlanta the night before, we would have to go to Philadelphia for the NFC Championship Game.

Right away, all you heard in the media were the reasons we had no chance of advancing to the Super Bowl. Three straight losses in Veterans Stadium. Two straight playoff losses there by a combined score of 52-12. No offensive touchdowns in three years.

The Bucs' 0-9 record when the temperature dips below thirty degrees, which was supposed to be the case in this game.

On Wednesday I began our first big team meeting of the week by telling the players what they had been hearing from the moment the San Francisco game ended.

"They say we can't win in the Vet," I began. "We can't win in the Vet?"

I popped a tape into the video machine.

"That's Tampa Bay wearing orange jerseys and playing in Veterans Stadium," I said. "They've got this little rookie linebacker, number fifty-five. That looks like Derrick Brooks.

They've got this big rookie defensive lineman, number ninety-nine. Isn't that Warren Sapp? They've got this third-year safety that seems out of position; he can't find the ball. I think that's John Lynch right there."

I showed about two or three plays, stopped the tape and said, "I was in my first year as the offensive coordinator of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1995, when this game was played. You came to Veterans Stadium and kicked our asses in the opening game. It was the most humiliating experience of my life. I'll never forget how horrible that feeling was-driving home at night with people yelling at me, flipping me the bird.

"Do you remember this game, Derrick? Warren? John? You guys have won in the Vet. We're only going to Philadelphia. It's in America. It's not like we're going out of the country."

After that we focused in on what we thought would be some of the keys to winning the game. As far as the coaching staff was concerned, the biggest was stopping Brian Mitchell, the Eagles' veteran kickoff-return man. We talked about that all week-morning, afternoon and evening. That was how big a factor we thought Brian Mitchell would be in determining the outcome. For whatever reason, we had not found a way to even contain this guy. He loved playing against us because he just always could count on breaking a big one, such as the forty-seven-yarder he had in October. After going through NFL Films footage of the Bucs' 2001 playoff game in Philadelphia, I found a clip of Mitchell, in slow motion, sprinting out from the tunnel with a look of excitement.

"He looks excited to see us, doesn't he?" I said. "He ought be; he owns us. WE'VE GOT TO STOP MITCHELL! There he is, number thirty. You've got to stop Mitchell!"

The day before the game, we were having our usual walk through. It was quiet in the Vet. While the defense was going through its part of the session, I was talking with Keyshawn Johnson and Keenan McCardell.

"Hey, call me a name," I said to them.

"What?" Keyshawn said as he and Keenan looked at me like

I was nuts.

"Call me a name."

"Jerk!"

"No, no. Give me your best stuff."

They started calling me foul names.

"Good, good," I said. "I'm just getting ready for tomorrow."

When I called, "Everybody up" at the end of the walkthrough, I said, "Okay, Keyshawn. What am I?"

"You're a blond-headed, butt-bleeping bitch!"

"Got that, men? Because that's what you're going to hear tomorrow. That's all you're going to hear the whole game. You might as well get ready for it today."

At our team meeting that night, I set out to address the challenges we faced the next day, beginning with that 0-3 losing streak in the Vet. I told the players about being in Pac Bell Park in San Francisco one night to watch Barry Bonds, the home run king, against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

"I'm a big Dodger fan, and we make him look bad his first at-bat," I said. "He doesn't even get a good swing. Struck his ass out! Second time he comes up to bat, he doesn't get a real good swing then, either. Pops up to second. Next time up. Strike three looking, outside corner.

"Barry Bonds is 0 for 3 when he comes up in the eighth inning. Does anybody in here think Barry Bonds isn't going to swing away? Does anybody think Barry Bonds chokes up on his bat and takes pitches? Or does he stand in there and take his cuts?

"Barry Bonds stands in there, all right, and takes this little white baseball way out into the ocean for another home run.

And that's what you've got to do. Take your cuts, man. Take your swing. Don't curl up thinking that you're going to strike out. Go in there and take your swings. Be Barry Bonds."

I used another baseball analogy to drive home the point that just because we were playing for the NFC title, in a place where we hadn't won in three years, there was no need for us to change our approach. I talked about how Randy Johnson, pitching on one day's rest, came in for the Arizona Diamondbacks in the ninth inning to get the Yankees out and win the World Series.

"Do you think Randy Johnson held his fastball any different?" I said. "Do you think Randy Johnson changed his delivery because he was throwing on one night's rest? Does anybody think that? No. He took the same windup, gripped the ball the same way and threw the same gas with the same location he always does. Perfect. And he got 'em out and he won the World Series."

In talking about the hostile Philly crowd and all the other distractions they could expect the next day, I switched to golf.

"Do you guys watch Tiger Woods play golf?" I asked the players. "I follow Tiger Woods. He walks from hole to hole, and on every hole he's got people giving him shit. They're tired of seeing him win. He's got good-looking girls distracting him, trying to get his phone number. You know what Tiger Woods does?

He hits that ball straight down the middle, and all I ever see him do is pound his fist, pound his fist, shoot sixty-five and walk away with all the money, all the trophies. And he does it every tournament. That's what you've got to do tomorrow. Play your game. Be at your best. And don't worry about anything else.

"Offensively we haven't scored a touchdown here in three years. Three years. No touchdowns. HOW CAN WE DO WORSE? You got shutout. I got shutout. Why don't we go out and do something about it? DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Remember, you get what you deserve. Go get what you deserve tomorrow!"

What I had in mind by "get what you deserve" is that we would jump out to a fast start, take their crowd right out of it and just roar to a big win. I wasn't even picturing how the game actually began, with Brian Mitchell-the man we needed to stop to give us our best chance to win-returning the opening kickoff seventy yards and Duce Staley scoring two plays later on a twenty-yard run. I'm thinking, Nice speech, Jon.

That place is going berserk. They've got a 7-0 lead and there are still fourteen minutes go to in the first quarter of the NFC Championship Game. You just know what the fans and the Eagles are thinking: We've got the Bucs beaten again. They haven't scored a touchdown here in three years. They aren't scoring one today.

But we answer that score with a score of our own, a forty-eight-yard Martin Gramatica field goal. It isn't a touchdown, but it's huge because it lets everyone know that maybe this isn't going to be as easy as they think it's going to be.

We stop them on their next possession and on third-and-two we call, "Triple Left 83 Double Smash X Option." That's where we have two guys run corner routes, two guys in the flat, and Joe Jurevicius inside working off whoever is covering the hook route inside. The guy covering the hook varies depending on the defense they're in; in this case Barry Gardner, a linebacker, is one-on-one with Joe, who as a receiver should have the edge in that match-up. Joe makes a nice play to take it seventy-one yards.

The catch was huge. The fact that Joe was on the receiving end made it even bigger, because we didn't even know if he was going to play. Five days before the game, his wife, Meagan, gave birth two weeks prematurely and their baby, Michael, was extremely sick. When Joe came into my office to tell me he wasn't sure about his availability for practice or if he would even make it to Philadelphia, I told him to just go be with his wife and son-that there was nothing more important than his family. In a situation like that, all you can do is try to be as supportive as you can. I've got three little guys of my own, and I know a couple of people that have gone through what Joe and his wife were experiencing. It stops your life cold. It just puts everything into perspective. As I spoke with Joe, our game suddenly seemed kind of small.

He ended up missing three days of practice and he didn't get to Philly until the night before the game. But I wasn't at all worried about the lack of preparation posing a problem, because Joe's a very heads-up ballplayer. He met with his coaches and studied the plays and was up to speed with where to line up and what to run. He was able to handle it with ease. But there was nothing easy about what he and his wife were going through.

Michael's illness was so severe that, sadly, he would pass away after the season. My heart goes out to Joe and Meagan. And I'll never forget Joe for showing unbelievable character and care for his teammates by playing in the game while his baby was still fighting for his life. I never heard Joe say this, but I think he played the game as much for his teammates as he played it for himself. I think that was a key motivator. He wanted to help his team win that game and he knew we needed him to do that.