Imagine a 4-6 team, its playoff chances all but gone, kicking a flamboyant, veteran receiver to the curb. Slowly, it refocuses and responds, mounting a late winning streak. Heading into the final week with a chance at the playoffs, it needs some help from others and to win its game, which it does when one of the NFL's best kickers slips and misses a chip-shot field goal.
As a wild-card team on the road, no one gives it a chance. But it pulls off an upset in the first round and follows with another over a division champ to reach the conference championship.
Sound impossible?
Maybe for the Bucs. But it wasn't for the Jaguars.
In '96, the Jags dumped receiver Andre Rison and then went on a roll, beating Buffalo and Denver on the road before losing at New England in the AFC Championship Game.
"It's so similar, it's eerie," said receiver Reggie Barlow, who was a rookie on that Jaguars team. "No one expected a second-year franchise to do what we did. We were struggling throughout the year. We made a couple changes, we got on a roll and toward the end, once we got into the playoffs, just like now, you never know what's going to happen.
"We went up to Buffalo; man, it was cold and nobody expected us to win. We beat them and rolled into Denver. I mean, c'mon. It was (John) Elway. It was his time. I can remember the look on his face when he realized we were going to win."
Barlow can't help but see the similarities with the 2003 Bucs, who deactivated Keyshawn Johnson for the remainder of the regular season.
"I can't wait to see what comes out of it. It's a similar situation to now," Barlow said. "We turned it around. For my teammates here, I've shared that experience. It can be done."
The Bucs likely would have to win their final five games to contend for the final wild-card spot. Even though the Packers hold the tiebreaker, they could even their record with Green Bay at 6-6 with a win tonight at Jacksonville. Seattle, which would receive the final NFC wild card if the season ended today, has tough games at Minnesota, St. Louis and San Francisco.
"If you look at it right now, we're a 5-6 football team with five games left and everything that we want to control, we still can control," nose tackle Anthony McFarland said. "We've just got to go out and play that way. Be short-term. So many things that have happened, you don't want to get at the end of the season and start talking about if that had happened, or if that not have happened."
A FINE MESS: From the he-said, she-said department comes the latest spin on the Johnson deactivation.
At halftime of the Monday Night Football game against the Giants, Al Michaels asked general manager Rich McKay why, given all the team meetings and functions he missed, Johnson never was fined.
"I don't know that," McKay said. "I think Jon (Gruden) did fine him on a couple of occasions."
Johnson, however, insists he never was fined and that McKay knows it.
"They never fined me one time," Johnson said. "And they know they didn't."
