Finding comfort in red zone Rick Stroud, The St.Petersburg Times, published 15 September 1997 Here's how you can measure how good the Bucs offense is this season: Michael Husted is not getting much of a kick out of playing on Sunday. This is not to suggest he isn't absolutely thrilled at his team's success. He is. But instead of attempting long field goals, he is mostly kicking extra points. A year ago, the Bucs finished 29th in the NFL in scoring inside the red zone. But in 10 trips inside the opponent's 20-yard line this season, Tampa Bay has six touchdowns and two field goals. The Bucs certainly have mixed it up. They have scored on a play-action pass to tight end Dave Moore, a play-action to fullback Patrick Hape, Mike Alstott running as a tailback (twice) and Warrick Dunn in the I-formation with Alstott blocking. "Mike (Shula) did a tremendous job of play-calling and keeping them off-balance," Tony Dungy said. "He went deep a couple of times on third down. We threw some underneath stuff. We ran the ball on third down. So we just kept them off-balance. "We have more weapons this year and we're able to do more things. And we worked on it in training camp a lot. I know people were concerned in the preseason. We didn't necessarily want to show everything we were going to do. But offensively and defensively, we knew we had to get better in the red zone. And it showed up." The Bucs are making good use of their new arsenal. Tampa Bay had five plays of 20 yards or more against the Vikings, which is significant when you consider it totaled 35 plays of that distance or longer last season. More important, all of the Bucs' longest gains were made by players who weren't on the field a year ago - Dunn (52-yard TD run), Anthony (26-yard run on a reverse, 28-yard reception) and Copeland (catches of 49 and 27 yards). "Warrick is a fantastic young man and a great back," Dungy said. "He's kind of like Barry Sanders in that you never know when that big play is coming. You can hold him in check for a long time, but that was a great run he made to put the game out of reach." Shula attributes the success to the team's' ability to run inside. Dunn leads all NFL rookies with 268 yards on 48 carries (a 5.6 average) and has runs of 49 and 52 yards. "Probably the main thing has been the fact we're running the football some down there," Shula said. "I think that keeps defenses a little honest and we're not trying to force it. It's easy when you get down there to try to force the issue and get a score right now." It's the presence of a bulldozing, 248-pound fullback like Alstott, however, that forces opponents to commit so many defenders to the run in the red zone. Alstott's 1-yard TD run was highlight material for NFL Films and caused the normally stoic Shula to lose it for a minute in the coaching box. "Oh, God. I was looking down at my sheet ready to call a third-down play," Shula said. "Then I was hoping the refs wouldn't stop the forward progress. I usually don't get too fired up, but I was fired up after that one." Alstott was matter-of-fact about the run. "It was second and third effort," he said. "Obviously, I wasn't over and I didn't think I was over and I hit the line, nobody had me tackled and I just bounced outside. When I bounced outside, I kind of got spun around and I just kept pushing with my legs. That's my running style. We've been mixing it up pretty well. I think when I'm at tailback and Hape is at fullback, a lot of people think we're going to run the ball and we've had a lot of success running. But also, we've had a lot of play-action fakes and I think in the last few games, a lot of teams had to respect that." Much of the credit has to go to Shula, who in retrospect, didn't have much to work with last season as the Bucs finished with the lowest-scoring offense in the NFL. "It's good because look at last year at this time and when did we get three wins last year?" he said. "Success is going to give us confidence, and that's what you need when you go down the road. You can't ever let yourself get too high, and you can't ever let yourself get too low. I learned that from a guy who coached about 30 years."