Young players try to enjoy trip after getting so far ahead so fast

SAN DIEGO -- The Super Bowl can be so predictable.

Each year the same storyline emerges about players that have poured prime years into the game without championship reward. It has taken 15 years for Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon and wide receiver Tim Brown to reach this week.

But there are always a few lucky ones, the first- or second-year players toting camcorders and golly-gee smiles and introducing themselves during Media Day on Tuesday at Qualcomm Stadium.

"I try to tell these young guys this is something you really have to savor because you don't know when you're going to get back to the Super Bowl," said Bucs linebacker Lomas Brown, an 18-year veteran who played for the Giants in Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa.

"When you get that in your first year a lot of guys are like, "Oh man, I'm going to get back. We've got a great team, a great foundation. I'm going to get back every year.' It doesn't happen that way. Each and every year your team changes."

Many of those young, inexperienced players on the rosters Sunday began the season on practice squads. The sudden leap to the Super Bowl can be a mind-numbing experience.

"Right now I'm enjoying the moment," said Raiders linebacker Tim Johnson, who was activated from the practice squad Nov. 24. "One day I'll sit back and look later in my career at how early I got to this point."

They may be fortunate for the opportunity, but it wasn't just handed to them.

A backup defensive lineman for the Bucs, DeVone Claybrooks spent more than two months in a Birmingham, Ala., hospital last year recovering from a spider bite suffered days before the World League's championship game.

"I got bit by a brown recluse," he said. "They had to do a skin graft and everything. ... I lost weight and was down to like 250 pounds. I almost died."

Claybrooks worked with a personal trainer, regained 58 pounds and was picked up by the Bucs after the Browns released him.

"I just feel very lucky," Claybrooks said. "They welcomed me with open arms. I know how it can be. It's tough if the team doesn't open up to you. Some of them look at you like you're an outsider. But then some people think, "Oh yeah, this guy can help us get to where we need to be.' "

The Jaguars and Raiders were the only teams interested in tight end Brandon Christenson when he graduated from Northwestern Oklahoma State, an NAIA school with an enrollment of about 2,000, in 1999.

Christenson is not expected to play Sunday because he sustained a foot injury in the playoffs after being activated by the Raiders Jan. 11, but he will be on the sideline.

"Here I am, I've played two years," Christenson said. "So yeah, this is great.

"It won't hit me until a couple years down the road or maybe 10 years down the road when my kids come and want to talk about it."

Having a Super Bowl ring to highlight the experience wouldn't hurt.

"I'm just soaking it all in," said Bucs linebacker Justin Smith, a rookie from Indiana. "Trying to soak it in and see what it's all about, so I can get used to it.

"I'm not going to know what to think or what to say if we do win. But I'd walk around with that ring hanging off my finger, letting it speak for itself."