Bucs mouthin' off: Warren Sapp

After last season's high expectations fell considerably short, you would think being the Super Bowl favorite would gag two of the league's loudest and most outspoken players. Think again. Warren Sapp and Keyshawn Johnson already have started their yapping ... and don't expect them to stop any time soon.

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By GARY SHELTON

© St. Petersburg Times,
published July 22, 2001

TAMPA -- Long before you see the beast, you hear the roar.

The walls cannot hold Warren Sapp. They shake as his voice bounces off them, almost bending the doors of the Bucs locker room. Outside in the hallway, down past the coaches' offices, you can hear the bombast. Sapp is louder than the other players, louder than the stereo. If someone was operating a chain saw, if someone else was stampeding cattle, Sapp would be louder than them, too.

This is his room, and on a routine summer day Sapp is working it. Other players, still sweating from their morning workouts, glance toward the boom of Sapp's voice every now and then. Some grin. Some roll their eyes. No one ignores him, because above all, it is impossible to ignore Sapp.

He stands in front of his locker, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, squatting like a safety and reading an imaginary defense in front of him. Sapp is talking about the season that got away, and how stupidity stripped the defense of its teeth, and the next thing you know, he is pantomiming his way through the season.

"The play went to the right!" he said. "Now, if you're the safety, where would you go? You're on the 2-yard line, for goodness' sake. They had one receiver, and he was to the right! Where do you go?"

Uh, to the defense's left?

"Yes! Of course you do!" Sapp said, fairly yelling by now. "And what happened? The ball is snapped, and our guy does this ... "

Sapp shuffles three steps to his right, away from the imaginary play. He swivels his head toward the imaginary receiver scoring the imaginary touchdown. He drops his jaw and widens his eyes, as if to say "How did that happen?"

Sapp stops, shakes his head. All these months later, and it still bewilders him how, against the New York Jets, the breakdown of a safety (Damian Robinson) allowed Wayne Chrebet to score the winning touchdown.

"It makes me want to puke," Sapp said. "We p--- down our own legs."

Welcome to Sapp Theatre. The next minute, Sapp is a cornerback (Brian Kelly) against Detroit, biting on a play fake that allowed the Lions to convert a third-and-22 situation. The minute after that, he is talking about a defensive end (Chidi Ahanotu) losing containment against the Vikings.

"Dumb s--," Sapp said. "By a variety of people, from me to whoever, we have to get over that. If Randy Moss beats you by out-jumping you for a ball, I can take that, because he's a monster. But when you kill yourself with stupid stuff, that's hard to take."

Perhaps you are worried about the Bucs offense, because it is July, and everyone always worries about the Bucs' offense in July. You are debating quarterbacks, and questioning wide receivers and concerned about offensive linemen. Around here, no one worries about the defense.

A year ago, however, the defense of the Bucs showed major slippage. For all the fierceness of the pass rush, the defense fell to ninth in the NFL. For all the stars on the unit, leads suddenly appeared shaky. Six times last year, the Bucs lost games in which they were tied or had the lead in the fourth quarter.

"We were missing something," Sapp said. "We weren't a great defense. We were ninth in the league. Please. We used to be a team that would knock you out. Last year we didn't have that, and I don't know where it went."

Time was, you could find no better insurance policy than the Bucs defense. Hand it a lead in the fourth quarter, and the game was done. That began to unravel last year. The unit seemed to lose its taste for blood.

"I'm not sure we believed we had to anymore," Sapp said. "We got comfortable. We saw Keyshawn Johnson walk through the door. We saw Randall McDaniel and Jeff Christie. Knowing what Warrick (Dunn) can do, what Mike (Alstott) can do. Maybe we got a little lackadaisical.

"We've got to get back to what made us America's favorite defense. If we have to win 3-0, so be it. Or 2-0. Or 3-2. That's what made us so much fun to watch. We'd go out there and say "We ain't gonna get s-- from the offense today, fellas. We've got to hand-deliver it. We've got to force a fumble on the one-yard line, and maybe we'll get three points out of that.' We used to have conversations like that in the huddle. That used to be our mentality."

So what happened? For one thing, the Bucs defense wasn't nearly as old and grizzled as you might have thought a year ago. Except for the stars -- Sapp and Derrick Brooks, John Lynch and Donnie Abraham -- many were in their first or second years as a starter.

Then, there was Les Steckel's offense, which didn't seem to put the same weight on controlling clock and field position as Tony Dungy's teams have done in the past. The result was the defense was on the field longer. It showed. The defense gave up 39 points in the first quarter last year; it gave up 92 in the fourth.

Sapp made headlines last year when he ripped the offense. That's his way. He is blunt and bombastic, proud and profane. He does not walk on tiptoes. "Damn the eggshells," he said.

"I can live with three yards and a cloud of dust," he said. "What I can't live with is third and three and a double reverse (against Chicago). You know the play that echoes with me? Taking a knee at Green Bay. A victory play, they called it. You don't win going backwards. If we had fallen forward for three yards ... did you see that kick? If we were three yards closer, that kick might have been good."

This year, Sapp expects the defense to be leaner, meaner. If his waistline is the first measurement, it has a chance.

Sapp had a good year last year. In some ways, he says, it was his best. He had a club record 161/2 sacks, tied for second in the NFL. But Sapp's weight ballooned to 330 pounds. He is down to 294, and it shows.

"We're the team to beat for, what, the third straight year?" Sapp said. "I'm tired of being the team to beat. I want a ring. I have a seven-year itch that I have to scratch. Michael Jordan won his first title in his seventh year.

"If this is not the team, there will never be one assembled around here. I'll put my career on this one. If I don't get a championship out of this team, I'm going to quit and go home."

He laughs, and the sound is loud and forceful, like footsteps on a quarterback's blind side.

He is coming. The rest of the defense, too. Listen, and you can hear the footsteps.

From a distance, it sounds like a stampede.

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