... and overrated

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By GARY SHELTON

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 1, 2001

MINNEAPOLIS -- For just another team, it was just another defeat.

Just another Sunday, and just another touchdown scored. Just another lead, and just another opponent driving just another mile to take it away. Just another game that should have been won, and just another game that wasn't.

By now, the Bucs fans among you are wondering how a game like this happens to a good team. It is the wrong question to ask. A game like this doesn't happen to a good team.

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Throw away all your perceptions. Throw away your player grades and your preseason predictions. Right now, the Bucs are average, everyday, plain. Of all the teams in the NFL, they are one of them. They are something more than the awful teams, yet something less than the good ones. They are middle of the pack, par for the course and leftovers for dinner.

Move along, people. Nothing to see here.

We expected extraordinary, and we have seen ordinary. We expected them to run at will, and they have been run of the mill. If you ranked the teams of the NFL, the Bucs would probably fit in nicely at 15th, which means NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue isn't fighting for nearly enough playoff teams. They are 1-1, one step forward and one step back, and it is as easy to make a case that they should be 0-2 as it is 2-0.

Of all the disappointments that came with the Bucs' 20-16 loss Sunday to Minnesota, this was the greatest. Worse than an offense that cannot find the end zone when it counts, worse than a defense that cannot protect the end zone when it counts, is the realization that right now, the Bucs remain far less than the sum of their parts. They're the team with the pewter helmets. How else are you going to distinguish them?

"Beatable," is the way Bucs defensive tackle Warren Sapp sums it up. "In a word, after two games, we're beatable. We need to have everyone doing what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it."

In other words, the Bucs need to make a few plays.

Any time now would be good.

Consider Sunday's game, against Whatever Is Left of the Minnesota Vikings, a squabbling, front-running team that keeps losing parts like an old Buick. This isn't the fearsome Vikings of recent seasons, mind you. They have been stripped by departure and tragedy, and these days, they play without Robert Smith and Korey Stringer and Todd Steusse and Randall McDaniel and Jeff Christie and John Randle and Dwayne Rudd and Robert Griffith.

They have a great young quarterback in Daunte Culpepper and great receivers, but a team isn't supposed to beat you when it is one-dimensional.

Yet, time after time, when it mattered most, the Vikings kept making plays that took your breath away.

Culpepper spent most of the afternoon beneath a stack of defensive linemen, yet his right arm kept popping up out of the pile and completing yet another improbable pass to the can-only-hope-to-contain-him Jim Kleinsasser (of the Carrington, N.D., Kleinsassers). Cris Carter, on a second-and-20 play, made an impossible one-handed catch to get the Vikings out of a hole. Tight end Byron Chamberlain, trapped between Donnie Abraham, Derrick Brooks and John Lynch, the Bermuda Triangle of Bucs defenders, comes away with a 37-yard catch. Culpepper, noticing a hole in the Bucs defense, ignored a pass play and ran for the winning touchdown.

Now, how many highlight plays did the Bucs come up with? Not good plays, mind you, but plays that were beyond the scope of what could be reasonably expected, plays that great players on great teams tend to make in great moments.

Not enough.

Offense? The Bucs could have put the game away midway through the fourth quarter. They had a three-point lead and the ball, third and 1 at the Minnesota 26. A good team steps on its opponent's neck right there. The Bucs? They get a holding call and punt.

Defense? The Bucs should have closed the door late. The Vikings had the ball at their own 4, 96 yards from victory. A good team makes that stand up. The Bucs? They backpedaled so fast the Vikings only had one third down on the drive. If they'd needed to, the Vikings could have driven to St. Paul.

Oh, the Bucs do some things. They pile up some statistics and, every now and then, they give you reason to hope. But is this special? Is this the production you expect when you look at the Pro Bowl players the Bucs have on the field? Eventually, no matter how strong Culpepper is, a defense has to wrestle him to the ground. Eventually, an offense has to score more than a single touchdown.

A suggestion. Until we see special, perhaps it is time for all of us to stop talking about talent. When the next person mentions Super Bowl to you, the accepted response should be to point and laugh. Perhaps it is time for someone on the Bucs to shove a finger into someone else's chest, the way Carter did to Culpepper last week, just to wake up this team before things get ugly. Perhaps it is time for the stars of the team to realize that greatness has to be renewed.

For now, the Bucs are a team that lives in the gray area between overrated and underachieving. They are a face in the crowd, wearing a gray suit and living a life more ordinary. They are mediocre, routine, common.

Either they will turn into something more rather quickly, or the season will be something less than tolerable.

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