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Rick Stroud, The St.Petersburg Times, published 25 October 1993
There's one whole week to go before Allhallows Eve, but the Tampa Bay Bucs already are in the spirit of things because Sunday they kept hearing boos.
One player said quarterback Craig Erickson prepared so much for the game against Green Bay that he was thinking about ghosts.
And as is their custom once they put on their pumpkin costumes, the Bucs did not act anything like the players who were so stoked they made up weird chants during practice this week.
"The boos will echo in my mind," said rookie receiver Lamar Thomas, who made his first pro start Sunday and dropped everything thrown at him. "I couldn't catch a cold."
Nor could the Bucs catch hot Green Bay receiver Sterling Sharpe, who caught four touchdown passes from quarterback Brett Favre to lead the Packers to a chilling 37-14 victory before
48,833 at Tampa Stadium. If the Bucs proved anything Sunday, it's that they are not idle worshipers.
Once again, Tampa Bay saved its worst for the game after a bye week - topping the 47-17 loss to Chicago after their first idle week.
The Packers improved to 3-3 while the Bucs lost their second straight to fall to 1-5, equaling their worst start since 1991, when they finished 3-13.
"They were clearly better than we were today," Sam Wychesaid. "They played a better game, coached a better game. We got out-coached. We got outplayed. We made more
errors than they did."
Erickson, trying to shake off four interceptions two weeks ago at Minnesota, completed only one of his first nine passes Sunday and was intercepted twice before being replaced in the
second quarter by veteran Steve DeBerg. Erickson returned to throw a pair of late second-half touchdown passes to rookie Horace Copeland and finished 8-of-20 for 151 yards.
But he spent a lot of time Sunday being consoled by DeBerg.
"There's a lot of soul-searching going on when you're down 20-plus points in the fourth quarter," Erickson said.
DeBerg said that before the game and again in the fourth quarter, he advised Erickson to react more and think less.
"It's good to prepare yourself as well as he does, and he's obsessed with it," DeBerg said. "But once the game starts, you need to forget about all that and just play. All the audibles will
come to you. You shouldn't walk to the line of scrimmage and say if they give me the 'bear' (defense), I do this. If they give me 'cover two,' I do that. You think about all these ghosts, is what happens."
Ghosts? Well, something spooked the Bucs on Sunday. Playing without cornerback Ricky Reynolds, who practiced this week despite an injured shoulder, the Bucs were burned by Sharpe, who caught 10 passes for 147 yards and a career-high
four TDs. Tampa Bay obliged by turning the ball over four times, and the Packers rolled up 421 yards on offense.
DeBerg was 4-of-11 for 30 yards and was intercepted once. But Thomas, who twice dropped third-down passes, was among several receivers who sabotaged drives with butterfingers. "It's beginning to get to where you don't know what to do other than what you're doing, which is you go out and catch 1,000 passes in practice and simulate game conditions," Wyche said. "And we have first down after first down - I don't know how many third-down conversions we dropped out there. (Erickson) had a rough day today. Truth be known, if a few guys catch the ball that's right on the money, it wasn't such a rough day."
The performance spoiled the return of left tackle Paul Gruber, who started and participated in a little more than 30 plays. The offense extended its streak of scoreless quarters to seven and trailed 30-0 before Erickson returned to the game. The offensive line held Packers defensive end Reggie White to one tackle, but the extra attention paid to him and Bryce Paup (who had two sacks) prevented the Bucs from sending as many receivers downfield. "One thing we definitely did was try to make sure the protection was good, and one thing that suffered a little bit was we couldn't control their linebackers much down the field," DeBerg said. "It was kind of a trade-off."
Meanwhile, Sharpe made the improving defense look mortal. He kept finding the seam between the cornerback and safety and was hit in perfect stride by Favre, who passed for 268 yards and the four TDs. "(Sharpe is) in the same system as Jerry Rice," Reynolds said. "They feature him. They try to get him the ball. He's a very strong runner and almost the size of a running back. Most of his routes are 5-yard routes, and he gains yards after catching the ball."
Favre, who struggled before Sunday's game, knows the Packers will have to work harder to claw their way back into the NFC Central race.
"It was easy for us, but it will never be this easy again," Favre said.
The task facing Wyche is trying to figure out how his team can show promise during the week and leave it all on the practice field.
"It's not the off-week," Wyche said. "I don't know what happens on Friday evenings and Saturday evenings. We see a different team out there on Wednesday and Thursdays than we saw today. We saw a sharper team during the week. A team that was up in the bit, a team that had little chants going in practice. Then we came out and didn't have the same zip."
Unfortunately, the Bucs play on Sundays. In fact, the next game is on Halloween at Atlanta. Now that's frightening.
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