Nickerson: `Not on our field' Gary Shelton, The St.Petersburg Times, published 13 December 1993 Hardy Nickerson was in full rage. He moved like a man looking for trouble. His body was a moving swagger, the shoulders ducking and bobbing. His finger jabbed toward the opponent. The words spewed from his mouth, harsh and pointed, each one of them inviting a rumble. And this was halftime . For the moment, everything that is Hardy Nickerson - the fire, the fight, the fury - was aimed at Chicago Bears placekicker Kevin Butler, whose mouth sometimes overloads his hoof. After kicking a field goal at the end of the first half, Butler walked toward the Bucs' bench, pointing and taunting. Nickerson could not have been more offended if the finger had poked him in the chest. Now, in the moments before the third-quarter kickoff, Nickerson was still fuming. He gestured. He yelled. He challenged. "Not here," Nickerson said later. "Not on our field. I told him to save that for his fans on his field. It's not going to go on here any longer." Such is the message of Hardy Nickerson, best of the Buccaneers. All season, through rage and motion and attack, Nickerson has tried to deliver it. It's not going to go on any longer. So long, we have heard it. So long, we have wanted to believe. Finally, a linebacker such as Nickerson has come along to help convince us. Sunday, when the Bucs beat the Chicago Bears 13-10, went a long way toward that. Once again, Nickerson stepped onto a football field for the Bucs and played an inspired football game. Nothing new there. It was the 13th straight game in which he has led the team in tackles, the 13th straight game in which he has recorded 10 or more. This time, the total was 15, which ran his season total to a Buc record of 175. He came here as a free agent, and at the time people wondered about the price ($1.7-million). As it turns out, Nickerson has been a bargain. He plays every play as if he were ticked off that the opponent would even try to gain yardage. Nickerson is always moving, always talking, always ready to mix. He is the guy flexing like Hercules after making a play. He is the guy shadowboxing with Detroit's Bill Fralic. The guy daring the Green Bay Packers' bench to go for fourth-and-short. Who has ever seen a Buc with so much fight? Who ever saw one with so much to fight against? Nickerson walked into the locker room swinging, if you'll remember. He had a quick confrontation with Keith McCants over work habits, and not long afterward, McCants landed in Houston. Since then, Nickerson has driven this defense toward improvement, pushing and pulling, one staggering step at the time, until it belongs to him. "He's the field general," Ray Seals says. "We're the soldiers." This, more than anything, was what fueled Nickerson's rage Sunday. He was angry at the Bears, angry over what he saw as a lack of respect for his team. "They had a perceived notion of what the Bucs are," Nickerson said, biting off the words. "After last game, they said that if they had lost to us, they'd be the laughingstock of the league. They called us Muffin Heads. I don't think we're Muffin Heads any more. I think we stuffed it up their butts. They flew in here to nice Tampa, and it was 68-70 degrees with a cool breeze. They were staying on the water, dreaming about what they were going to do. But this is a different team. We went out there to make a statement." For the Bucs, that statement starts with Nickerson. Oh, he wasn't the only star. Marty Carter tackled Tim Worley from behind on a fourth-and-1, and Roger Jones stopped Robert Green on fourth-and-6. Unlike the Green Bay game two weeks ago, the entire Bucs' defense refused to surrender the killing drive. As Nickerson said, "There was a lot of Hollywood going on out there." But the star of the show, as ever, was Nickerson. His neck hurts, if you want to know the truth. His shoulder is sore. He had to have fluid drained from his knee on Tuesday. Sometimes, he forgets things after the constant head banging. Yet, as safety Carter says, "He never takes a play off. He makes 15 and 16 tackles a game, which doesn't leave much for the rest of us to do." As fate would have it, Sunday was Pro Bowl balloting day at Tampa Stadium, and there were "Hardy for Hawaii" signs out. But the team is 4-9 and the defense was rated 22nd before Sunday, so Nickerson might be overlooked. That would be a shame, because he deserves the trip. "I don't think there are a lot of linebackers better," Nickerson said. Nor are there linebackers who have done more. He has led the team on the field, and he has led it in the locker room, and he has tried his darnedest to lead it from the wastelands. "The thing that was missing when I came here was pride," Nickerson said. "That, and the ability to respond when something bad happens. Now, when something bad happens, we get mad. You have to let people know that you're not going to get pushed around like in the past. We're a different team now." Some statement, that. Some player, this. You don't believe it, take it up with him.