Success, beyond shadow of doubt

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By GARY SHELTON

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 12, 2001

TAMPA -- Upon introduction, the first thing you will want to know about the new guy is simple.

Hey, Simeon? Where is the rest of you?

He stands in front of a Miami tackle on a humid Saturday morning, his hands on his hips, and Simeon Rice does not exactly block out the sun. He is a man of slender shadow, a greyhound in a world of pit bulls, and at first glance, you might think he has shown up to play the wrong sport.

He is tall, rangy, built like a shooting guard in the NBA, maybe a small forward in college. It is easy enough to picture him somewhere above the rim. But as a meat-eating, bloody-knuckled, trench-dwelling defensive end? In the NFL?

Then the ball is snapped and someone turns the day into fast forward. Rice turns into a blur, leaning, twisting, spinning, straining, reaching over a Dolphins tackle with those impossibly long arms toward the quarterback.

This is how he introduces himself, the new man on the Bucs front four. He says hello one pass rush at a time, all of them pointed toward a fresh start.

He isn't prototypical. There is something different about the way Rice looks, and something different about the way he sounds. Eventually, he believes, you will grow to appreciate them both.

"This isn't a gamble," Rice said. "I'm a sure thing. I'm going to do the job. That's a guarantee. I'm going to do some exciting things."

Time was, the Bucs would have spent their preseason fawning over a free-agent signee such as Rice. They would have propped him in front of cameras and talked about what he could do for the team, rather than vice versa.

These days? The Bucs have treated Rice as just another man holding just another oar. Nothing more. They expect him to provide heat as a speed rusher from right end. They do not expect him to carry a defense.

Still, this could turn out to be a home run for the Bucs. In five seasons, Rice has 511/2 sacks. Throw him next to Warren Sapp, Anthony McFarland and Marcus Jones, and third and 8 is going to be a miserable proposition for the opponent.

For Rice, questions linger. One of them is his willingness to play the run. Another is his consistency. In Arizona, Rice was known to take a play or two off, which is not uncommon. In Arizona, there have been players who have taken months off. By the time he got to Phoenix, even Glen Campbell took a song or two off.

That seemed to have happened to Rice. He had 161/2 sacks in '99 and made the Pro Bowl, but last season with a holdout and a shoulder injury, that fell to 71/2. The word across the league was he plateaued. He still was very good, but not the special athlete he seemed to be as a rookie in '96.

The Bucs, however, were looking for a right end. They wanted to move Marcus Jones, who had 13 sacks last year as a right end, to the left side to replace Chidi Ahanotu. To do that, they picked up Rice at a clearance price. No one compared him with Bruce Smith. No one asked him to pick up the load.

Still, Rice has sufficient numbers that, as he goes through drills, you can see teammates watching. So far, they approve.

"This guy is better than advertised," Sapp said "In this league, you hear so much about so many players. But this guy is better than I thought he was going to be."

Yeah, but will he play the run? "He's got to," Sapp said. "If he doesn't, I'll slap the s--- out of him. That's the way we are on the D-line. We're a tribe."

Now that he is playing alongside other great players, Rice's imagination has run wild. Asked how many sacks he might get this year, he thinks. He leans his head against the cool wall outside the Bucs locker room.

"Forty," he said. Forty?

"Why not?" he said. "I have that kind of ability.

Forty? The league record is 22, which means if Rice were a baseball player, he'd be talking about hitting 135 home runs in a year. The Bucs record is 161/2. The Bucs front four had 451/2 last season. To get 40, a player would have to average 21/2.

Forty? "It's a fantasy number," he said. "Why not think of doing things no one has ever done."

He talks of sacks, and Rice's face lights up. Why not? Short of a turnover, it's the most harm a player can do to the opposition, a matter of down, distance and psychological damage.

"Let me tell you what it's like," Rice said. "You're broke. You don't have any money, all right? You're a little hungry. It's raining. You're at your house, but when you go to open the door, it's latched. You look in the window, but nobody's home. You're locked out and it's cold and rainy outside and there is no money in your pocket. You expect to be there four or five hours. Then someone shows up that you know, and he gives you the key, and you open the door, and you can see that your house is beautiful. And you open the refrigerator, and everything you can ever imagine is in there And there you are. It's not raining anymore, and you're not cold, and you're not hungry. It's satisfying. And when you sit down, your favorite television show is on.

"What a day. What a day."

Rice laughs at his analogy. He likes his days. He likes being on a team that contends, on a team that can allow his career to progress.

"It feels good feeling good," Rice said, grinning. "I don't need marketing. I look good. I'm beautiful in the face. I have Adonis-type form. I have a physique to die for. I have abilities other players would like to be able to pay for. It feels good to be me. I enjoy being me."

"I like the pressure. I still feel as though I'm the key, as though I'm the reason I'm going to win games."

For Rice, the difference is he finally is at a place where other players feel the same way. After five years of wandering in the desert, it's a good place to be.

Maybe this works. Maybe Rice helps his team. Maybe his team helps Rice.

And in the end, maybe a slender shadow provides all the shade that is needed.

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