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Game of trust

Bucs fans face one question today: Do you believe Keyshawn or Jon Gruden?

In the end, it was all about ego.

This was about self-deception. This was about chest-thumping. This was about the love of the center stage. It was about disappointment, about irresponsibility, about a man pushing things too far.

This was about one man's failure.

Now, you must decide.

Is that man Keyshawn Johnson? Or is it Jon Gruden?

On the morning after, that is your choice. You can believe in the receiver who is going long or you can believe in the man who called the play. You can believe the player's mouth is too big, or the coach's hand is too heavy. Either way, it is time to make a choice.

It is about trust now. Either Keyshawn took it with him, or Gruden kept it safe. Either the Bucs are headed for trouble, or they have just told it to go away.

You decide.

All that is at stake is credibility.

A weird season got weirder Tuesday, and a disappointing season found a new failure when the Bucs fired Johnson. Oh, you can use the term "deactivated," one of those cold, polite words that was invented in a lab. Ha. The Bucs canned Keyshawn. They expelled him. They threw him out of the fort and told him not to come back.

Do you bless Gruden for it, or do you blame him?

Do you believe in Gruden? That's the real issue here, isn't it? The details of Johnson's transgressions are so sketchy, the allegations so vague, that it comes back to what you think about the head coach.

If you trust Gruden, you are able to will yourself to believe this was the right move. You can even believe it was the right time. You can imagine being Gruden as Johnson played the class clown in an ever-increasing attempt to agitate him. You can believe Gruden had grown weary of Johnson's presence and tired of his absences.

The Bucs need for you to trust Gruden today. After all, in a season of weakness, this was a strong move. In a season of doubt, it came with conviction. In a season of confusion, it was at least clear.

This just in: Keyshawn is a pain in the posterior. His strongest supporters admit that, from Monday to Saturday, Johnson can wear a coach out. He pouts and he needles and he manipulates. He's all about him all the time, and his playing career is the longest soliloquy anyone ever heard. Nobody thinks Johnson is as good a receiver as Johnson thinks himself to be.

That said, Johnson has played well enough to earn a little credibility himself. He makes tough catches, he plays hurt, he plays hard. There will be those who believe Johnson when he suggests Gruden shoved him out of the door because the personalties of the two clashed. There will be those who think this happened because Johnson didn't salute sharply enough.

To believe in Johnson, of course, is to doubt Gruden. For a coach who won a Super Bowl 10 months ago, there is a lot of that going around. A 4-6 record has some comparing him to Barry Switzer. The Internet is relentless on Gruden, painting him as a coach at war with his general manager (denied) and his receiver (discarded).

And, if you tend to doubt Gruden, it is easy to question the timing, and the finality, of Tuesday's decision.

Why didn't the Bucs try a shorter suspension, one game or two, just to see how it worked? Why throw an unruly kid out of school? Why lock the door and throw away the Key?

Consider the mess of a season facing Gruden when he went to work on Monday. His season is all but lost, and his left tackle is awful, and his defense leaks, and his line can't stay onside, and his offense is slow, and his special teams appear to be coached by Clyde Christensen.

All that, and the first thing he does is decide to throw away a perfectly good Keyshawn Johnson.

What? Did Gruden wait until the exact moment the season was out of reach before he was fed up with Johnson? Was Keyshawn's full-of-it factor really that much greater than a week ago, than a month ago, than a year ago?

Put it this way: For all the talk of how this was going to make it easier for the Bucs to win, ask yourself this: If the Bucs were 9-2, would they have cut Johnson Tuesday? Of course not. (Of course, Keyshawn probably wouldn't have made himself quite so annoying along the way, either.)

Yeah, yeah. Keyshawn didn't want to play here after this year. And how many thousands of times have we heard that? Hey, the entire Bucs franchise from 1985-95 didn't want to be here.

If you're keeping score at home, count this as a failure all around. By Rich McKay, who gave up too much to acquire less than four years of Johnson. By Gruden, who couldn't win Johnson over. By Johnson, who couldn't be won.

In the end, who should you trust?

I know this. If you ask most of those who follow the Bucs closely whether Gruden puts up with too much or too little, they'd say too much. He'll suffer felons and hammerheads and blowhards in the name of winning. He'd play Dahmer and Manson as receivers if he thought they could get open.

So, yeah, you have to figure Gruden had a good reason to turn loose a good receiver. You have to agree with those who suggested Johnson begged for this to happen. Yeah, you have to extend your trust enough to believe this:

It wasn't Keyshawn who saw through Gruden.

It was Gruden who saw through Keyshawn.