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These Bucs need a philosophical change
© St. Petersburg Times TAMPA -- There is a certain beauty to the plan. An elegance that is difficult to define. If you do not understand this scheme favored by the Buccaneers, then perhaps you are standing too close to appreciate it. Take a step back. And another. Keep going. When you reach Pittsburgh, it will all come clear. This is what we have lost sight of in Tampa Bay. That in 1999, this same philosophy brought the Bucs within a few minutes of a Super Bowl. That in 2000, this philosophy won a Super Bowl for Baltimore. That today, it has Pittsburgh zeroing in on a Super Bowl, and has put Chicago on top of the NFC Central. The details will vary from team to team, but the basic premise is the same. Cross a defense that snarls with an offense that plods, and months later you have produced a playoff contender. You can say the Bucs are staid on offense. You can say they are predictable and conservative. And you would be more right than wrong. But you could also say the same about the Bears and Steelers and both are very close to homefield advantage. This is the problem when you spend too much time staring at the bottom line. Sometimes you fail to recognize the factors that led you there. "You can win any way in this league," Bucs coach Tony Dungy said Wednesday. "You can win the way St. Louis played, you can win the way Baltimore played, you can win like Pittsburgh is playing. It never bothered me that people have said that you can't win a certain way, or the way we like to do it. You can't worry about that. "But I've been in the league long enough to know you can win any way, as long as you're tailored to what your players do best." Which brings us to the Bucs. And their flirtation with mediocrity. Tampa Bay's shortcomings are not necessarily because the game plans are inherently flawed. The plans simply do not match the personnel. At some point, the Bucs decided their defense was as strong as years past. They were wrong. At some point, they decided they had the makings of an impressive running game on offense. They were horribly wrong. The result is this team is trying to win based on a false premise. That the defense will hold teams to fewer than 14 points. (It can't.) Or the offense will benefit from a running game opponents must respect. (It doesn't) Dungy has not given up on the idea that results will improve in the final three weeks, but he does acknowledge the game plans do not dovetail with the players quite as well as previous years. "We're trying to do that, but it's changed," Dungy said. "It's different right now than maybe other teams we've had. But I still think we're going to have to run the ball and play run defense. If we do that well the last three games we have an excellent chance to win them all." The reason the Bucs appear to have the same weaknesses in Week 14 as they did in Week 1 is they have little choice. Abandoning a team's approach in midseason is practically unheard of in the NFL, which explains why Dungy insists drastic changes are not the answer. The Bucs plotted this course in July and have little choice but to stick with it. It is not like they can become a vertical passing team because they do not have downfield threats. And it's not like they can put the ball in the air any more than they do, since they already lead the league in pass attempts. "You don't come up with a new scheme or put in a new system," quarterback Brad Johnson said. "You tinker with your plays here and there. Find different ways to run the same play with different personnel, different formations, different motion. You hate to say it, but you just have to perform better. "We've changed a lot of little things. Obviously, when you see a play go for 1 yard, you don't think we've tinkered with it. We've changed things quite a bit, but it's nothing you can notice from the 50th row." This is where the Bucs might suffer with Clyde Christensen as offensive coordinator. No matter what you think of Christensen's potential as a coordinator in the NFL, he remains a novice in the job today. In much the same way Kenyatta Walker was moved from right tackle to left tackle and asked to perform at a high level as a rookie, Christensen has been moved from quarterbacks coach to coordinator and asked to adjust and adapt a flawed offense as a rookie. The task is not impossible. Just figure out how to get a square team out of its round hole.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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