|
|
 |
Roy Cummings, The Tampa Tribune, published 17 October 2005
It's their bye week, and boy, do the Bucs need it. They lost their starting quarterback, another starting safety and a backup cornerback Sunday. It didn't matter. They still won the game. Bucs 27, Dolphins 13. An improbable season continues. They're not even at the midway point and already Tampa Bay has put up as many victories as all of last year.
Go ahead, revel in it. The Bucs plan to. "We talked all week about putting 5-1 up on the board," defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin said. "It's huge. The bye week is supposed to be fun for the players and the coaches. Win, and you can kick back and relax."
Jon Gruden, relax? Don't count on it. Not even at 5-1. "Winning five games was never my goal," he said.
But it's a good start. The Bucs have the best record in the NFC and could play .500 ball the rest of the way and still finish 10-6. The Bucs aren't thinking that far ahead. Not after Sunday. Their victory came at a cost, the price of which has yet to be fully determined.
The Bucs probably won't know for sure until at least today, but starting quarterback Brian Griese could miss several weeks, if not the rest of the season, after suffering what is believed to be a torn left ACL late in the second quarter. Griese went down with what the Bucs called a sprain when Dolphins linebacker Zach Thomas rolled into him. Griese was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital for an examination during the game, but results of those tests were not immediately available. Sunday night, one Bucs player termed the injury severe.
There's also no telling how long starting free safety Dexter Jackson will be out after he re-injured his right hamstring. Nor is there any way of knowing yet how long nickel back Juran Bolden's shoulder injury will keep him out. The only thing anyone really knows is that the Bucs, who were also without running back Cadillac Williams and strong safety Jermaine Phillips, won't need anybody for another two weeks.
That's the good news. Here's some more: As they did two weeks ago, when they beat the Lions while getting only partial contributions from Williams and Phillips, the Bucs proved they can win with a supporting cast. With Williams out nursing his sore left foot, the Bucs turned again to Michael Pittman in the running game, and Pittman responded by rushing 15 times for 127 yards and a touchdown. And with Phillips out nursing his sore left thumb, the Bucs defense turned again to Will Allen, who responded by scooping up a Gus Frerotte fumble at the Dolphins' 33-yard line and carrying it into the end zone for a touchdown.
The Bucs also got efficient work from backup quarterback Chris Simms, who engineered two second-half scoring drives. "In pro football we pay 53 men, and all of them have to be able to go out there and earn their paychecks," Gruden said. "It's up to the coaches to get it out of them, and they did that. But our personnel department deserves some credit, too. [General Manager] Bruce Allen and [head scout] Ruston Webster -- these guys they brought in here have really come through for us so far."
It wasn't just the backups that aided the Bucs on Sunday. They got some contributions from their front-liners, too. For example, Griese capped off the first drive of the game by hitting Joey Galloway with a 7-yard TD pass. Griese then led a nine-play, 67-yard drive that resulted in Matt Bryant hitting a 36-yard field goal that gave the Bucs a 10-3 lead at the end of the first quarter.
The Bucs went three-and-out on three of their next four drives, but with Simms in for Griese, they went 76 yards in 14 plays and added another field goal to increase their lead to 13-6 at the start of the second half. "He came in there and really made some big plays for us in the third quarter," Gruden said of Simms. "He escaped and made some plays on the move that were very big for us."
Pittman made a couple of plays while on the move, too. The biggest came on the Bucs' next drive, when he juked his way around Jason Taylor in the backfield before taking off on a 57-yard touchdown run. Taylor nearly caught up to Pittman as he began celebrating while approaching the end zone, but Pittman had built up just enough of a lead to beat Taylor to the goal line. "I thought he'd fallen down," Pittman said. "Then, all of a sudden, I feel somebody clip my feet and it was Taylor. I guess when I got into the open field, I just slowed down a little bit."
There doesn't seem to be any slowing these Bucs. Even when they lost this year (last week at the Jets) they managed to outgain their opponent. They did that again Sunday, when they limited the Dolphins to 64 yards rushing while allowing them to convert just three of 14 third downs. "What we've done here these last couple of weeks and again [Sunday] is show that we have depth at all positions and that we have heart," Simms said. "We really felt like we were overlooked by a lot of people at the start of the year, and ever since then we've been looking forward to going out and showing those people that we're better than they thought we were."
Sunday's effort did a lot to prove the detractors wrong. And with the bye week, the Bucs have two weeks to try and regain their health so that they can continue to prove their detractors wrong. "I used to not like the bye week," Gruden said. "But we're going to see if we can get the two-week bye program going."
|
|
|
| |
| |
|