Tampa Bay Buccaneers 15 Chicago Bears 0 Sunday 29 December 2002 at Champaign, Illinois ESPN COMMENTARY CREW Mike Patrick, Paul Maguire and Joe Theisman
This Sunday night encounter was the final game of the 2002 regular season and thanks to the Jets’ victory over Green Bay earlier in the day, the Bucs knew a win would earn them a bye week in the playoffs. The Bears were down to their third and fourth string quarterbacks and playing away from a renovating Soldier Field, had no real heart for this one. Five Martin Gramatica fieldgoals were all the scoring needed behind back- up QB Rob Johnson and the defense had four interceptions to stop any kind of serious Bear scoring threat. This game also turned out to be the long-awaited first franchise victory when the game temperature was under 40 degrees.
GAME SCORING TB 3:22-2Q Gramatica FG30 TB 0:02-2Q Gramatica FG32 TB 13:12-4Q Gramatica FG33 TB 7:05-4Q Gramatica FG33 TB 3:14-4Q Gramatica FG26
GAME REPORTS Roy Cummings' take on the game Martin Fennelly's award-winning column Gary Shelton's viewpoint Control the clock and win Quotes from the Buc locker room The defense is back Game notes and anecdotes The game report The gamebook and the play by play of the game
STARTERS OFFENSE DEFENSE LT 72 Oben LDE 94 Spires LG 71 Jenkins UT 91 Darby C 62 Christy DT 99 Sapp RG 60 Coleman RDE 97 Rice RT 67 Walker LLB 51 Singleton TE 85 Dilger MLB 53 Quarles WR 19 Johnson RLB 55 Brooks WR 87 McCardell LCB 25 Kelly FB 40 Alstott SS 47 Lynch RB 32 Pittman FS 34 Jackson QB 11 Johnson RCB 20 Barber PLAYED 7 Gramatica, 9 Tupa, 23 Phillips, 26 Smith, 27 Stecker, 30 Barnes, 35 Ivy, 38 Howell, 43 Cook, 52 Webster, 58 Golden, 66 Benjamin, 74 Green, 75 Brown, 77 Washington, 80 Yoder, 83 Jurevicius, 86 Williams, 88 Dudley, 93 Claybrooks, 95 Warner, 96 Wyms DID NOT PLAY 10 King INACTIVE 14 Johnson, 31 Wansley, 64 Goodspeed, 81 Lee, 84 Barlow, 89 Crawford, 90 Gurley
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS RUSHING BUCS: Pittman 21-90, Alstott 12-42, R.Johnson 3-29. BEARS: Peterson 7-42, Johnson 9-21, Burris 4-14, Sauter 2-8. PASSING BUCS: R.Johnson 25-16-134-0-0. BEARS: Burris 19-7-78-4-0, Sauter 9-6-59-0-0, Brooks 1-0-0-0-0. RECEIVING BUCS: K.Johnson 5-41, Dilger 3-32, Pittman 2-28, Jurevicius 2-12, McCardell 2-11, Dudley 1-6, Alstott 1-4. BEARS: Booker 4-25, Merritt 4-22, White 2-21, Johnson 1-31, Gilmore 1- 30, Shelton 1-8. INTERCEPTIONS BUCS: Kelly 2-(-1), Brooks 1-44, Smith 1-2. BEARS: none. KICK RETURNS BUCS: Stecker 1-29. BEARS: Merritt 4-106. PUNT RETURNS BUCS: Jackson 1-21, Williams 1-7. BEARS: Merritt 2-11, Johnson 1-13. SACKS BUCS: Wyms 1-4. BEARS: Daniels 1.5-6.5, Boone 1.5-4.5, Green 1-10, Urlacher 0.5-1.5, Howard 0.5-0.5.
VIDEO CLIPS Click on the boxes for the main plays from the game All defensive highlights as Derrick Brooks had the first interception Brian Kelly had a pair of them And then Dwight Smith got one in spite of the commentary call