Bucs: No joy in just earning berth in big game

No joy in just earning berth in big game

The Bucs know chances are limited, so they must treat this Super Bowl as their only shot.

By RICK STROUD, Times Staff Writer

SAN DIEGO -- You hear it from Tampa to Tijuana. Win or lose Super Bowl XXXVII Sunday, the Bucs have had a great season.

It's true, they set a franchise record for wins, led the league in defense, won their first NFC championship and validated the trade for coach Jon Gruden.

But to get this far and not win the Lombardi Trophy is like trying to put the cork back into the champagne bottle.

"I think guys all realize it," Bucs general manager Rich McKay said. "You'll still be able to say you had a great season. But you've got to take the shot. To win a championship, you've got to take the shot now. You do not want to be in this offseason and have that damn Time-Life Sports Illustrated commercial come on and say, 'Call in and get the Raiders Super Bowl highlight tape.' You do not want that."

To understand how rare Super Bowl appearances are, the Bucs don't have to look at their history. They can consider the Raiders.

The silver-and-black team of Al Davis is among the most successful franchises in pro sports. Yet, it waited 19 years to return to the Super Bowl.

Just happy to be here?

"No. I don't think you can look at it like that," Bucs quarterback Brad Johnson said. "Too many of us have gone through too much in our careers to accomplish what we have to get to this point. There is no just happy to be here. If you lose, it's a train wreck. We've got to win this thing if we want to fulfill our goals and dreams."

Johnson is in his 11th season, and though he enjoyed a Pro Bowl year under Gruden, he missed three starts with injuries that nearly prevented him from playing in the postseason.

Defensive tackle Warren Sapp, linebacker Derrick Brooks and safety John Lynch are among only 13 Bucs from the 1999 team that reached the NFC Championship Game. It took them three seasons just to get back to that game.

"If you lose, you're the Atlanta Falcons," McKay said. "That '98 season, for them to do what they did in '98, and then go to Minnesota and beat the Vikings, who were 15-1, is a phenomenal year. A great year. A year later, it was erased in everybody's mind."

"You know what's at stake. I think my dad's (John McKay) most disappointing loss (as coach), probably in life, was the Ohio State game in '68, O.J. Simpson's senior year, because it cost them a national championship. (Southern Cal) was ahead at halftime and we had them. That was a hell of a year, but we didn't finish it."

Perhaps no one wants to win more than Gruden, who has a major hand in the success of both teams at the Super Bowl. Gruden was asked if he would take any satisfaction if the Raiders won.

"Well, I'll tell you, this has been a real strange week for me," Gruden said. "Some of these questions are almost impossible to answer without making someone mad. The only thing I can say is I'm so happy for a lot of those people there. If they win, they deserve to win and I tip my hat to them. At the same time, I can't tear myself in half with all these emotions. I'm the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and I'm very excited about that and whoever wins the game is going to be very jubilant, very excited. And whoever loses is going to be very, very sad. Because you try so hard to climb that mountain and you get knocked off it, it's a tough day. I know."

In some respects, the Raiders' urgency is greater. With veterans like Rich Gannon, Tim Brown, Jerry Rice, Sam Adams and Bill Romanowski, Oakland's salary cap restraints will not allow them to keep this team together after Sunday.

"I feel a sense of urgency every day," Raiders coach Bill Callahan said. "I wake up to win. It doesn't matter whether it's a veteran-laden team or whether it's a young team. I think the climate that prevails in the National Football League, because of the salary cap and because of free agency, I think you have to continue to re-establish that goal year in and year out. So every year is a critical year."

So far, the Bucs appear to have handled the Super Bowl XXXVII distractions with relative ease. And McKay said he likes the confidence the Bucs derived from their 27-10 win over Philadelphia in the NFC Championship Game.

"I liked (Thursday's) practice and the focus," he said. "But it's a Super Bowl, and the attention and the distraction and everything else, you've got to put it all away at the end of the week. The one thing I know, our guys gained a lot of confidence last week. They gained confidence really the last two weeks. They're playing well at the right time.

"We've been 3-1 in every quarter. And we're 2-0 in overtime (the playoffs). We've just got to go 3-0."

In his final news conference Friday, before posing with the Lombardi Trophy, Gruden was asked if the opportunity for his team to become NFL champions has registered.

"Yeah, it has sunk in. It definitely has," he said. "And when the playoffs began, we knew we had an opportunity to get in this game. And now we are here and we can't change dramatically in terms of how we prepare, but it is very clear in all of our minds what opportunity we have on Sunday afternoon. And we want that very badly."