If Bucs are good, then what's bad? Gary Shelton, The St.Petersburg Times, published 14 September 1998 Not much changed here Sunday. Not the game. Not the result. Not the death march afterward. The Bucs moved across Lambeau Field and toward the locker room with the same empty faces as always. The same fans leaned over the same railings and yelled the same taunts. The same scoreboard held the same result and the same disappointment. Except this time, it was worse. The last time the Bucs moved across this field, it was about a beginning and an end. The end of a season but, it seemed at the time, a beginning of a run by a team that seemed ready to bloom. This time, the Bucs looked a lot like a mediocre football team limping away to lick its wounds. "We've fallen further behind since the playoff game," Bucs coach Tony Dungy said. "When we lost then, we made some mistakes that cost us some opportunities. But today we just weren't competitive." Again. It is an ugly number, 0-2. It speaks of a team that suddenly looks as if it is playing for a wild-card berth, if that, instead of a division title. It speaks of a team that has dug itself into the cellar of the NFL's best division. It speaks of stumbling out of the blocks and forcing a strong finish to win the race. But sometimes, however, it doesn't speak loudly enough. This time, things are worse than the record. With the Bucs, oh-two isn't the problem. Oh-no is the problem. The poor record isn't nearly as troubling as the poor play. The offensive line cannot block anyone. The running game cannot get going. The quarterback cannot hold onto the ball. There have been two offensive touchdowns in two games. The penalties keep coming. The turnovers, too. You can say it all you want. This is a good football team. But these days, you have to say it with a question mark. This is a good football team? ''I still believe we are," safety John Lynch said. "I think we're a very good football team. But, no, we haven't shown it. We've regressed." This is the reality. In their past 13 regular-season games, the Bucs are 5-8. This season, they have been clobbered and then re- clobbered. That doesn't happen to elite teams. Which leads one to this conclusion: The Bucs are not an elite team. The shame is, they have slipped further away from it than they were a season ago. Right now this is the most disappointing team in the NFL. Not because it lost at Green Bay and Minnesota; the smart money said the Bucs would be underdogs in both games no matter when they were played. The disappointment is the Bucs were buried both times. Two- thirds of the league has already won; the Bucs have not. So ask yourself: Are they overrated or under-achieving? Have we all oversold the talent here? Have we taken a bunch of highlight-film plays, powerful runs by Mike Alstott and darting ones by Warrick Dunn, and weaved them into something we think resembles a team on the rise? Is the problem here the team has believed all its hype, or that we have? Here's the question of the day. Where has the personality of this team gone? When this team is on its game, it is one that runs over its opposition, that protects against turnovers, that forces other teams to do the loopy things with the ball it has done on consecutive Sundays. It makes safeties dizzy from chasing Dunn and skittish from crashing into Alstott. So where is this feared combination? Dunn has only 83 yards in two games. Alstott has only 22, and he's averaged only 1.7 yards per carry. In other words, the only guy finding any daylight in the Bucs offensive line turns out to be Reggie White. The record tells you this much: The Bucs are in trouble. You run through the history of the league, and not many teams rally from 0-2. That's because few teams that have the ability to rally go 0-2. This one has. It has begun a season ouch and ouch, the sequel. So for all of the insistence by the players that this is one of the league's better teams, that it still has the ability to turn this season into something special, that the ability we perceive will show itself very, very soon and things will be all right, there are only two words to say.