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Roy Cummings, The Tampa Tribune, published 18 December 2006
You can question his play calling, his use of fullback Mike Alstott and his decision to keep quarterback Tim Rattay on the bench for so long. The one thing you can't question Bucs coach Jon Gruden about is his claim that there was no quit in his football team. Sure it was a loss, Sunday's 34-31 overtime setback to the Bears that was the Bucs' 11th of the year against three victories. But this one didn't have the same feel to it.
For once the Bucs didn't march as if they were headed to the gallows. They had a spring in their step; they had resolve, lots of resolve. How else do you come back from 21 points down in the third quarter and force the NFC's regular-season champ to play a fifth quarter? It takes resolve.
The Bucs had plenty, enough to turn a laugher into a game again; enough to push the Bears to the brink. "There's no quit in this team; we proved that," running back Cadillac Williams said. "Still, a loss is a loss, and that's what this was."
It wasn't like all the others, though. It may prove to be nothing more than a blip of light in an otherwise dark season, but this one left you hoping. It left you wondering, too, mostly about Rattay. It was, after all, Rattay who pushed the Bears back on their heels.
A week after Gruden turned to him looking for a spark, Rattay finally provided it by engineering four second-half touchdown drives. They were the first touchdown drives in 13 quarters for the Bucs, whose coach isn't quite sure yet if he's ready to make Rattay his starting quarterback.
Though Rattay did what starter Bruce Gradkowski couldn't, which is put the Bucs in the end zone, Gruden refused to announce a change in the depth chart. "I'm not going to get into that right now," Gruden said when asked who would start Sunday at Cleveland. "We've made enough quarterback changes. I feel like a baseball manager changing pitchers. So we're going to do whatever we feel is best for the upcoming week and the future of the [team]."
Rattay's future is uncertain. He becomes a free agent after this year, and until Sunday you could argue that his future was not with the Bucs. On Sunday, though, Rattay ignited something within the Bucs that has been missing for weeks. After a slow start in which he completed just two of six passes for 17 yards in the first half, Rattay connected on 18 of 29 throws in the second half. Three of those second-half passes were for touchdowns, one was intercepted and all were part of an outing Gruden couldn't help but praise.
"I thought he did a good job in a tough situation," Gruden said. "You're behind and you're playing this defense on the road in a 24-3 ballgame and he made some great plays. They were coming from everywhere and giving us a lot of different looks, but he made them pay several times. He hurt them real bad. He hurt them real bad and showed some things."
Gradkowski didn't. For the umpteenth time, the rookie struggled to move the team and complete even the most routine passing plays. His performance was the polar opposite of Rattay's, but not even Rattay was ready to say he should take over the offense. "That's for the coach to decide," he said. "But I don't do this to practice and get a front-row seat. I want to play, all year, every game. But if you're No. 2, then that's your role and you play it."
Alstott has been playing something of a secondary role all year, too, but he did almost as much to spark the Bucs as Rattay did. That's how Rattay saw it, anyway.
With the Bucs trailing by a seemingly insurmountable 21 points, it was Alstott who completed the Bucs' first touchdown drive by running in from 14 yards out to make it a 24-10 game.
"That touchdown was huge," Rattay said. "That kind of got us going because we weren't doing anything before that. But then we get that touchdown and another by Alex Smith. That was huge, too."
Smith's score shifted the momentum in the Bucs' favor because it came just three plays after Blue Adams forced and Wesly Mallard recovered a Devin Hester fumble on the kickoff following Alstott's score. That brought the Bucs to within a touchdown of matching the Bears, who quickly regained their two-score edge when Cedric Benson scored on a 4-yard run to finish Chicago's next drive.
The Bears also regained the momentum when they intercepted Rattay, but a defensive stop and a Rattay pass that Joey Galloway grabbed and ran 64 yards with for a touchdown kept the Bucs alive. Another defensive stop and a Rattay pass that Ike Hilliard grabbed and ran 44 yards for a touchdown forced overtime.
That's where the Bucs reverted to their old ways. Smith lost a fumble and rookie Jeremy Trueblood was flagged for throwing his helmet in frustration. That set up a potential game-winning field goal, but Robbie Gould missed wide left on a 37-yard attempt.
Two later drives netted next to nothing for the Bucs, who gave the Bears the ball at the 50 with 6:23 to play in the extra session. Six plays later, Gould hit a 25-yard field goal to win the game. "I don't think the scoreboard reflects the intensity and fight that we showed," Bucs nose tackle Chris Hovan said. "It's been a tough season, but that was a tough one to swallow."
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