A bye week bonus A pretty good weekend for the Bucs, as home defeats for Carolina (who’ve yet to win a home game at all this year) and New Orleans improve our position without us even having to suit up. If anyone would like to win the NFC South, please raise your hand! It’s just conceivable that one or two NFC teams might sneak into the play-offs without even posting a winning record. And then there was one 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 0-14 2007 Miami Dolphins: 0-9 The 1976 Buccaneers were the last NFL team to finish a season without a win and, with the Rams’ unexpected victory in New Orleans, Miami are now the only team capable of emulating the feat. Legend has it that the 1972 Dolphins’ players celebrate with champagne each year when the last of the unbeaten teams is defeated. I have it on good authority that, in honour of the Bucs 1976 expansion team, Paul Stewart cracks open a bottle of Blue Nun when the last of the winless teams registers its first victory. Keep it on ice for the time-being, Paul. A Pirate’s life for me Thanks to the efforts of Messrs Jones and Stewart, I’ve been fortunate to see a few Bucs home games in recent years. Raymond James Stadium is hugely impressive and I’ve always thought the Pirate ship at Buccaneer Cove a fantastic characteristic and the most unique feature of any stadium I’ve ever seen. Located at the north end-zone, the 103-foot-long ship is an authentic replica of an early 1800’s Pirate ship and it serves as a vantage point for some lucky fans. However, it struck me that there could be some more practical uses for the ship on game day, which the Glazers might consider: rather than just use cannon fire when the Bucs reach the red-zone and to distribute trinkets to the fans, they should also liven-up the visitor’s sideline by firing real cannon balls in their direction - let’s see Randy Moss catch those one-handed! Captain Long Jon Gruden could also make Michael Clayton walk the plank each time he drops a pass. Other NFL teams view this distinctive stadium feature with some envy and developed some of their own franchise-specific stadium themes:- The Kansas City Chiefs hired a group of Native Americans to fire a hail of arrows when the home team scored, but organisers omitted to tell them not to fire towards the crowd. Consequently, the stunt wasn’t entirely successful, but it did mean that a number people got to the front of the Season Ticket waiting list a good deal quicker. The San Francisco 49ers celebrated their Gold Rush history by coming up with the novel idea of distributing gold nuggets to their Season Ticket holders, but most sold the nuggets and bought tickets for the San Diego Chargers instead. The Cowboys’ idea of rounding-up groups of fans at Texas Stadium and branding their arses was very short-lived. When did it become a bad thing to score points? Although I’ve never had much time for the New England Patriots and their embittered Head Coach, they’ve clearly come a long way this year from being the NFL’s equivalent of George Graham’s Arsenal side. In winning three Super Bowls in four years, the Pats were disciplined, efficient and, frankly, pretty dull. This year, though, Tom Brady has a shiny new set of toys to play with and the Patriots are scoring points for fun. However, much has been made in recent weeks of the Patriots’ lack of class in ‘running-up the score’ against their opponents. They have had some huge winning margins (beating Washington by 45 points, the Bills by 31 points and winning by 24 against both the Jets and Chargers) and this has drawn some accusations of poor sportsmanship. It has even been said that it’s Bill Belichcik’s revenge against the League after the “videogate” scandal. I find it a bizarre notion that, in a professional sport, anyone should think it dishonourable for a team to continue to play hard until the final whistle. Surely, it’s more unprofessional to go easy on an inferior team? Wouldn’t losing teams be more insulted if they felt that their opponents had taken their foot off the pedal? Don’t paying fans deserve to see a proper game, rather than watch second-stringers playing out the fourth quarter? I think that most people would rather watch Tom Brady throwing to Moss, Stallworth and Welker than see Matt Cassell trying to link up with Jabbar Gaffney and Chad Jackson. There is, of course, a potential down-side to the approach that New England are taking: by keeping their starters in until late in the game, they run the risk of picking up unnecessary injuries, especially if an opponent feels that his team is being embarrassed and decides to take a cheap shot in order to make a point. At the moment, though, the Pats seem content to let Brady throw on fourth down, even with a big leads. It shouldn’t be long before the Patriots’ play-off place is secure and home-field advantage is guaranteed – it’s at that point that teams invariably begin to sit their starters and it will be interesting to see, in their remaining games, what approach Belichick will take and how interested New England really are in equalling the Dolphins feat of an unbeaten regular-season. Footnote: In 1985, the Buccaneers were beaten 62-28 by the New York Jets and there was speculation that the Jets’ huge margin of victory was a deliberate attempt to run-up the score in retaliation against the Bucs for an incident which occurred when the teams met the previous year: in the final game of the 1984 season, Tampa controversially appeared to stop playing defense and allowed the Jets to score late in the game in an apparent effort to get the ball back so that James Wilder could attempt to break the record for most yards from scrimmage in a season. Wilder finished 16 yards short and the Bucs got a real hiding when the teams next met.