Reality Check A home match-up against the Giants was the best we could possible have hoped for going into the play-offs, but I suspect that many of us still looked forward to the game more in hope than expectation. It was a real shame, though, to go out with such a whimper. With no stand-out team in the NFC, the Conference Championship is anyone’s. It all started so promisingly, with the Bucs’ defence absolutely flying around and the Giants offence struggling to find any rhythm. Unfortunately, the early promise soon evaporated and Ernie’s score proved to be the high-point of the game for Tampa, as the Giants changed their offensive approach after the first quarter and we had no answer to Eli Manning’s short and intermediate passes over the middle. You’ve got to give credit to Giants’ offensive co-ordinator Kevin Gilbride for adapting his game-plan so effectively. When New York eventually got their passing going, it opened things up again for the ground game and Ahmad Bradsaw duly obliged by running roughshod over us for a period in the second half. Dare I suggest that Monte Kiffin was out-manoeuvred on this occasion? Coming up against a decent, but beatable, Giants team, we gave-up twenty-four unanswered points and struggled to put together sustained drives. Micheal Spurlock went from hero to villain when he coughed-up the ball right under the nose of Jon Gruden on the second-half kick-off return and, although the turnover only resulted in a field goal, the Bucs were never able to re-gain the ascendancy. Whilst it would be easy to focus on the Bucs’ shortcomings, we were simply beaten by a team who outplayed us on both sides of the ball. I really thought that we could get after Eli Manning and force him into mistakes, but he must have taken a great deal of confidence from his strong performance against the Patriots last week and he showed a good deal of poise when the Bucs challenged him to beat them with his arm. Perhaps Eli is finally maturing into a quality QB. Jon Gruden said after the game that he had no regrets about the Bucs’ preparation, but Tom Coughlin’s gamble in playing all of his starters for the entire game against New England was vindicated and his team came in with greater momentum. Tampa’s offense, in particular, looked out of sync and Jeff Garcia seemed undercooked, having played little meaningful football in the previous month. We can take a lot of positives from the season, but the play-offs brought a harsh reality check. The fact is we’re a solid, no-frills team - we progressed to the post-season from a pretty dire Division and we’ve beaten very few good teams along the way. A good defence will carry you so far, but you’ve got to be able to hurt quality teams when you’ve got the ball and we can’t currently do that. Next year the schedule can only get tougher and, at this moment in time, we’re probably somewhere in the middle tier of NFL teams. That said, the Bucs have certainly exceeded most people’s pre-season expectations of them and there is plenty to build upon for next year. The Bucs’ healthy salary cap position, with reportedly around thirty million dollars of space available, should enable them to strengthen the offense during the off-season. As good a job as Jeff Garcia has done this year, he’s clearly not a long-term option and he’s never had the strongest of arms. I’m sure Garcia will probably get another year under centre, but surely the Bucs needs to look for his successor sooner rather than later. The ageing Joey Galloway aside, we have no deep-play receiving threat and this needs to be addressed – I reckon Chad Johnson might look good in a pewter and red uniform. Santa was good to me this year and I received a couple of excellent NFL books for Christmas, which I would recommend:- In “Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL” by John Feinstein, the author was granted behind-the-scenes access by the Baltimore Ravens during the 2004 season (the year they traded for Terrell Owens, only for him to subsequently demand to go to Philadelphia). The book gives some interesting insights to the running of a franchise and is a good read, even for non-Ravens fans. “Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football Junkie”, by Mark St. Amant, is a must-read for anyone who plays fantasy football. The author persuaded his wife to let him give-up work for a year, under the pretext of writing the book, to enable him to concentrate on winning his fantasy league. There’s some real laugh-out-loud stuff here and I know that a number of the Bucs UK members will identify with the trash-talk between St. Amant and his friends. Slightly surreal moment of the weekend: I switched-on the TV Sunday lunchtime to watch one of the F.A. Cup games and the BBC were showing yet another repeat of the dire “Keeping Up Appearances”, where social-climbing snob Hyacinth Bucket was wearing a Minnesota Vikings cap – clearly the Vikes attract a better class of fan! Hyacinth’s good-for-nothing slob of a brother-in-law, Onslow, must be a Panthers fan Mike Davidson, January 2008