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For quite some time, the National Football League has been partitioning its games into four segments of 15 minutes each. The Studious Tampa Bay Bucs may have absorbed an encyclopedia's worth of knowledge about the sport, but it is this basic NFL tenet that their subconscious refuses to digest. "We haven't learned," said sagacious defensive end Pat Toomay, one of the Bucs' father figures, "that the game goes four quarters."
Sunday at Tampa Stadium. Tampa Bay coaxed the Cleveland Browns to a deadlock in the first half that could easily have ended in the Bucs' favor weeks ago at Denver, the Bay Bucs similarly repaired to their halftime headquarters on an even keel with the Broncos. Against Miami, they chose the final two quarters to perform like champions. And back in September, they actually extended their competency through the first three periods against Buffalo.
But when the scorekeeper tallied up point totals at the final gun, the Bucs found themselves on the short end each time. Sunday the nasty numbers were 24-7. At the midway break, it was 7-7. The Buc defense had lowered its guard only once, while the offense had rung up 13 first downs without a turnover, and quarterback Steve Spurrier, dispensing passes in every conceivable manner short of behind his back, was 12-of-17 with a sack.
Their touchdown couldn't have come off more efficiently had it been directed by Robert Altman. Essex Johnson hauled in a screen pass and noticed five potential impediments between him and the goal line. Four wore the white jerseys of the Bucs.
"We had so many people (blockers) I thought we'd run into one of them and fall down," said Coach John McKay. He wasn't joking. "If you look at the films close enough, you’ll see we almost did."
McKay almost expected somebody to crack open a bottle of champagne in the locker room at the half. "A lot of our guys were yelling 'only 30 minutes more' and a lot of other idiotic yells. "It looks like a different team to me every game when the second half starts. They pat themselves on the back for having a good first half."
The Buc players later pled guilty to the charge. "We were fired up, really motivated," said cornerback Danny Reece. "Really hyper."
Was there even a chance for (gasp) victory? "Yeah, there really was," answered offensive tackle Mike Current. "If we played as well as we did in the first But the Bucs had already expended their "good" half. "It didn't help," admitted Current, "when the offense got a dead zero in the quarter."
"We didn’t protect our quarterback, give him the time we gave him in the first half” explained Johnson. Spurrier took a beating from the breakdown, getting dumped three times and fumbling under pressure on a play that the Bucs would gladly trade for another sack. It was a giftwrapped TD for the Browns. "Cleveland just realized they were in a football game," Spurrier said of the second half.
One indication of Spurrier's assessment was the miraculous recovery of Greg Pruitt. The Browns' major ground-gulper was supposed to have bypassed the game while recovering from an injury, but a strange herb seemed to have healed him. It was the fear of Cleveland missing out on the playoffs. Pruitt gained only 44 yards but his contributions gauged higher on another scale. "They didn't want to get beat," Current figured. "And a guy like that helps your mental state."
After 11 false starts in their opening season, the Bucs' mental state is creditably positive. Only they might open their NFL rulebooks to Page 1 for a refresher course and read "A game is divided into four quarters.
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