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Monte and Clyde

On running back Corey Dillon, who has 784 yards rushing and seven touchdowns:

"He's special. He's right there at the top. He's unbelievable. He's big, powerful and really fast. That's why he has those big days. We showed it to our players, his 96-yard run against Detroit this year. He gets across the line of scrimmage and if you don't have your gaps right, wow, he can really go the distance."

On the Bucs' improvement against the run the past two weeks:

"You can see what a healthy Derrick Brooks looked like Monday night. He looked like a defensive back. That's the Derrick Brooks we all know. It's not his fault, he couldn't do any more out there. Our players feed off of that, also, and we avoided the big breakout runs. Our run stats are misleading because of the big breakout runs we've allowed. But we're not a team you look at and say let's just line up and run the ball against them."

On the Bengals' cloudy quarterback situation:

"We'll prepare for Jon Kitna. Now they've moved Akili Smith to No. 2. We've gone against Kitna before (in Seattle). But it's funny with these quarterbacks in the NFL. They can get hot real quick. They can find themselves and you just have to hope they don't find themselves against us Sunday."

Bucs offensive coordinator Clyde Christensen:

On the Bengals' improved defense behind linebacker Takeo Spikes:

"Takeo Spikes looks like he's their leader. They're a lot like the early Bucs. They've used a lot of high draft picks and got an awful lot of good players and some good young talent, also. When you draft high, you get good young football players."

On using Warrick Dunn and Mike Alstott the way he did vs. the Rams:

"That's always our objective. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way. But I think Warrick is getting healthier than he's been, and that helps because then you can design some things for Mike. When Mike, Keyshawn and Warrick get the ball in their hands, we have a chance to make some plays. Certainly, Monday night was an example of what can be done when that happens."

On the need to follow Monday night's performance with another good one:

"I think this becomes a huge game. Monday night means nothing if we go up here and lose this one. And we shouldn't. We should go and improve. I hope we're improved from last Monday night. Still, for the last three weeks, we've done some incredibly (good) things but there's been some incredibly disappointing mishaps, dropped passes and mishaps that have kept points off the board and stopped drives. You're on borrowed time when you do that.

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