Super season becomes a thing of the past Martin Fennelly, The Tampa Tribune, published 19 November 2001 Boink. That is the sound of the final play of the Super Season. The sound of who's kidding who? The sound of losing football. The sound of the Bucs. For an instant, in the time it takes to kill off hope and start heads rolling, there seemed to be no noise in Raymond James Stadium other than the football kicked by Martin Gramatica bouncing off an upright. It was as clear as a bell, and it tolled for the home team. Oh, I could put a brave face on it, about how all that's needed is for the Bucs to go up to St. Louis next Monday and put a hat on the Rams. But then you'd only ask me exactly how many of Nate Newton's 213 pounds of grass were headed for my house. It wasn't just that the Bucs lost to the Chicago Bears. It was why they lost. It is how they lost. What do you say about a defeated team when the winning points come after a punt play in which the only person who doesn't know it's a punt is the punter? Bucs fans left muttering about the 7-2 Bears and their miracles. They're doing it with mirrors. Well, the Bucs are doing it with mirrors, too. In this case, objects are smaller than they appear. Playoffs are a flyspeck. The Bucs have shrunk from competition and contention. And so there was justice in Sunday's finish. The only cruelty was the sag to Gramatica's small shoulders and the tears that filled his eyes as he left the field. It's more than you, kid. And When Is The Draft? It's so much more that there are only seven teams in the NFL with worse records than your Bucs, who are in a logjam with other 4- 5s. On the bright side, if the season ended today, the Bucs could get the eighth pick in the next NFL draft. And don't forget this: They could trade up. Sunday, the Bucs lost this game long before Gramatica's miss. They lost it in the first half, when they had four different drives at or inside the Chicago 20 and came away with only three field goals. They lost it with their lousy offensive line, which helped the Bucs to rumble for 19 yards on the ground. You've heard of the Seven Blocks of Granite. Meet the Six Buckets of Gravy. And the Bucs defense, the eternal stopgap suddenly turned ephemeral, couldn't stop the infernal Bears, transforming Polish sausage into sirloin. Heading into Sunday, Chicago hadn't scored an offensive touchdown off the Bucs in 18 quarters. They scored twice in 1:40 in the third quarter for a 21-9 lead. Mind you, the Bears tried to force the Bucs to come back and win. It made for low theater and high comedy. We're still laughing. How about the sight of that fourth-quarter Chicago fumble that lay on the sod for approximately three days before two Bucs, Marcus Jones and Shelton Quarles, fell on the ball without recovering it? What about the Bears, up only three, taking a knee on fourth down at the Tampa Bay 31 with 18 seconds left, giving the Bucs a final shot and starting an advance ticket sale in Chicago for the public execution of Bears coach Dick Jauron. The Bears even threw in an unnecessary roughness penalty to give Gramatica a fighting chance from 48 yards as time expired. That's where we came in. But the lead-up to the Bears' winning field goal is the kind of thing that will pique the interest of JFK conspiracy theorists. What, exactly, happened on the grassy football field on that fake punt? Why the Bucs even considered a fake from their own 25 on fourth- and-six with more than nine minutes left and down only 24-16 remains a mystery. But it pales next to what ensued. It seems Aaron Stecker, the Bucs up man on the play, was supposed to call for a straight punt if Chicago's formation didn't allow for a fake. And it didn't. Stecker yelled "Ohio! Ohio!" to alert his teammates. We're punting. Everybody heard him. Except Bucs punter Mark Royals. Oh-my-o, Oh-my-o. Royals is supposed to get a physical signal rather than a verbal one. The up man pats one of his own hamstrings to let the punter in on the secret. Stecker didn't. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it Buc-a-luck, but Stecker was the up man on the play only because he replaced Rabih Abdullah, who had a concussion (It was Rabih with the concussion, right?). And so it was that Royals took the snap, looked up to throw and saw teammates running downfield to cover a punt. It later occurred to some that, faced with confusion, Royals might have opted for kicking, since he gets paid for that. Royals was one such person who thought that. "Maybe I should have punted," he said. That, kiddies, is the Bucs season. Maybe they should have done this or that or this. Instead, Stecker waved for the pigskin, Royals completed the pass, Stecker dove for the sticks and came up short, too bad, because if he had made the first down, the Bears would have taken the penalty called on the Bucs for illegal men downfield, which would have moved the ball back and the Bucs would have punted. Sigh. The Bucs have the same record as the Washington Redskins. Only the Redskins have won four in a row. Who would you rather be? As for the Bears, they are sitting pretty for the playoffs. They still get to play the winless Lions twice. And they get the Bucs again. Boink.