Bucs D takes game by throat Gary Shelton, The St.Petersburg Times, published 27 September 1999 At the time it mattered most, nothing mattered but them. It was their game now, to grab or to let go. Everything else was leftovers. For the defense of the Tampa Bay Bucs, dying to prove itself in a moment that counted, it was a time to prove greatness or to surrender all claims to it. It didn't matter who the opponent was, or where it got the ball, or how many times. It didn't matter how much time was on the clock or how many plays were going to be required. The rest of the game had faded to insignificance: the performance of their own offense, the pressure on their shoulder, the pain in Warren Sapp's left hand. All that mattered was the lead, and holding on to it like it was Terrell Davis' leg. Forget the statistics, flattering as they may be. This is how you tell if a defense is great, and this is when you look. When defeat is in the air, when the clock is running out, when a quality opponent is trying to pull a game from your hands. This is when a defense shows if it is good enough in the moments that are crucial, if it can make too-darned-few points stand up, if it can slam the door and keep defeat on the other side. This is how you determine greatness. This is how you pronounce that a team has taken a step toward it. Even for a defense that has earned its stripes, this was something special. The Bucs defense stood up Sunday afternoon against the two- time Super Bowl champions. Then it stood up again. And again. And again. It slammed the door in Denver's face so often that Brian Griese must have felt as if he were handing out pamphlets. This has been the missing element. For all the praise that has been heaped upon the defense of the Bucs, for all the statistics that shaped its image as something special, this has been a team with a shaky bullpen. Last year, the Bucs had a tendency to hold leads with pinkies extended, gingerly, and they let teams such as New Orleans and Jacksonville and Washington off the hook in the late going, and it left a tarnish on a team's reputation. You don't become great in little moments. And so it was that Brad Culpepper was pacing down the sideline of the Bucs bench late in the game, exhorting his teammates, imploring them, reminding them how this was the opportunity they so desperately wanted. They had a lead. They could grab it by the throat, or they could choke it away. "Last year, we screwed the pooch when the game was on us," Culpepper said. "This year, we wanted to go ahead and put it on our shoulders." "This was what we wanted," safety John Lynch said. "If you're going to be a great defense, you have to close out games like this." You know games like this, when the lead seems so wobbly, you half expect it to fall off the scoreboard. The Bucs had their way for much of the day, but the Broncos kept hanging around, and pretty soon, it looked like a baseball game where one team leaves so many men on base it comes back to haunt it. Suddenly, the Broncos were within three points, and they were at midfield, and the Bucs offense was in the fetal position. Which is when the Bucs grabbed the game by the throat. Davis, too. On the Broncos' final four series, on their final 18 plays, they gained all of 14 yards. They didn't convert a third down. They didn't convert a fourth down. Chidi Ahanotu had a sack. Derrick Brooks made four tackles on five plays, including a fourth-down stop of Shannon Sharpe. Damien Robinson knocked away a fourth-down pass. It was like beating, well, a dead horse. "This is what we've been waiting for," defensive tackle Sapp said. "We were going to take this game into our own hands. We were going to cut the jugular and step on their necks." It should be pointed out that Sapp was something of a victim of the defense, too. In the second quarter, his hand got between safety John Lynch's helmet and Davis, and he broke two bones. It didn't keep him out despite pain "worse than you can imagine." "Are you kidding, man?" he said. "I can deal with the pain. I couldn't deal with not being out there. I always felt like I was this team's blood and guts. I wasn't coming out." From the looks of it, neither was the defense. Tampa Bay's defense kept chasing Denver off the field, but after about, oh, 45 seconds and a punt, Sapp had to come right back out. By the end, all the Bucs were doing on offense was trying to stay out of its way. Consider this. On one drive, coach Tony Dungy chose to run on first and 14, to run on second and 15, to run on third and 13. And no wonder. The Bucs defense held Davis, the finest running back in the NFL not currently taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower, to 53 yards on 19 carries. The Broncos converted a grand total of 8 percent of their third-down conversions. "We went out to make a statement," Ahanotu said, "and we made it." Okay, brief disclaimer. John Elway has retired, taking many of Mike Shanahan's brain cells with him. But Elway didn't take the running game with him. This is still going to turn out to be a pretty good Denver team. "Elway could not have moved them down the field," Sapp said. "They were going to lose this game." In the end, that doesn't matter, either. Elway used to own moments like this. Now the Bucs defense has made a claim of its own. So, do you think it can do it week in and week out? Answer: It better.