Do You Love Football?! (22 page)

A lot of our terminology in Oakland was carried over from what I had learned during my 49er and Packer days. For instance, if you call, "Red Right," the flanker lines up to the side of the call and the split end lines up on the opposite side. So in practice, we'd call, "Red Right" in the huddle, and Tim Brown would go to the right and so would Jerry Rice, because he had always gone to the right for sixteen years in San Francisco. We'd say, "Huddle up!" again. We'd call, "Red Right" again. And Jerry Rice would go to the right side. Again. He was just programmed to be a flanker, so we had to, in a certain sense, deprogram him. It took a couple of weeks for Jerry to learn how to do things the opposite of how he had done them for sixteen years.

Until he became acclimated to his new position, he had to look at the formations as they were drawn up, hear them in the huddle and digest them.

But I had never seen anything like the work ethic of this thirty-nine-year-old Hall-of-Famer-in-waiting. He would get our practice scripts and through every second of the prepractice stretch, he would have a coach quiz him on the pass routes we were going to run that day. Between every period he would be off to the side, on one knee, concentrating and studying the next grouping of plays we were going to run. He hated making mistakes. He had so much pride in getting every detail right, it was amazing.

Look at what he's still doing as a player as he approaches forty-one. His success over such a long period of time is no fluke. It's all because of an unbelievable everyday work ethic.

He's an amazing guy.

It was such a thrill, a rush to put together a seven-on-seven practice script knowing you had Tim Brown and Jerry Rice lining up against Charles Woodson and Eric Allen. When you put Jerry on the same team with Rich Gannon and Steve Wisniewski, you're going to have a chance to win every single game. I can't say enough about what a great experience it was to coach Jerry Rice.

After winning our division with a 12-4 record, we played the Baltimore Ravens in the 2000 AFC Championship Game in the Coliseum. We knew it was going to be a tight-fisted game and we were still very much in it until it was over. The Ravens had a great defense. It was big, it was physical and it was talented. I remember looking at them in pregame warm-ups and thinking, Look at the size of these linebackers. My God, they're huge!

They had Ray Lewis in the middle, and Peter Boulware and Jamie Sharper outside. They had two shutdown corners in Chris McAlister and Duane Starks. They had Rod Woodson at safety.

They had those two big guys-Tony Siragusa and Sam Adams in the middle. If you don't double them, you don't run. If you double them, no one gets to Ray Lewis. Even if you do get to Lewis, he just tramples people and makes the play.

But we had some pretty good players on our side, including the AFC's starting quarterback in the Pro Bowl-Rich Gannon.

Unfortunately we wouldn't have him healthy, or even on the field, for the whole game.

Everyone remembers that Siragusa fell on Rich early in the second quarter. Everyone remembers that Rich left the game at that point with a separated left shoulder, but it wasn't Siragusa's 350 pounds that did Gannon in. Rich actually was injured on the third play of the game, the result of an error. The snap was supposed to be on two, but our center, Barrett Robbins, snapped it on one. Mike McCrary ran around the end unblocked because the left tackle was still in his stance. He landed on Rich, separating his shoulder.

Rich tried to play through it, but he was hurting. When Siragusa fell on him that was pretty much it. Bobby Hoying, who hadn't played all year, took over and threw an interception on his first pass. Rich tried coming back in the second half. He did everything he could to stay out there. It just wasn't going to happen, so he came out for good.

Without a healthy Gannon, we knew we were in trouble, although Bobby did do a good job of rallying us. He threw a touchdown pass to Andre Rison with about four minutes left, but it was nullified because Andre was called for offensive pass interference. We ended up losing 16-3.

That was a rough way to end a great season. It took a heavy toll. We had a chance to play the Conference Championship Game at home. You go to the stadium thinking Super Bowl.

Our fans were fired up. The players were jacked. You're just not ready for the season to be over. But the next day there you are, handing out the offseason calendar. Guys are cleaning out their lockers, all going their separate ways. It's quiet. It's like death.

It's terrible.

After that game the Raiders notified me that they were going to pick up a two-year option in the three-year contract I had signed in 1998. But I was realistic enough to know that I was still very accountable. I still had to get results. If I didn't, I would be gone. Reaching the AFC title game was nice, but all it really did was set the bar higher. We were expected to take the next step. I knew we had a good enough team to be very competitive again. With Rich Gannon at quarterback, I knew we'd be back.

We went 10-6 that next season. We won the AFC West again, but in losing our last three games we cost ourselves a first-round bye and home-field advantage in the playoffs. That meant we had to turn around five days later and play the Jets, who beat us in the regular-season finale on a last-minute field goal, again in the wild-card round. We played well and beat them, setting up a Saturday-night game in New England for a chance to go to the AFC Championship Game.

The snow was falling like crazy in Foxboro, Massachusetts.

It's not supposed to be the kind of weather that a California team can handle, but we were the ones with the 13-10 lead with 2:24 left in the fourth quarter. We had a third-and-one from our own forty-four. We were a yard away from winning the game. We went to our signature short-yardage play, 14 Blast. It's supposed to work like this: Rich Gannon hands the ball as deep as he can to Zack Crockett, our short-yardage specialist. Zack runs right behind the lead fullback, Jon Ritchie, who blocks the onside linebacker. Steve Wisniewski pulls around the horn to block the backside linebacker. It's a great play. At least we thought it was. Much to our surprise, Bryan Cox came up to stuff it. No gain. We were still playing.

Our Pro Bowl punter, Shane Lechler, kicked a short punt.

With no time-outs the Patriots got the ball at their forty-six.

Tom Brady moved them to our forty-two. From that point forward, the whole country became very familiar with something called the "tuck rule." What we saw from our sideline was Charles Woodson blitz Tom Brady as he dropped back to pass.

We saw Tom Brady fumble. We saw Greg Biekert recover it at our forty-eight. Our players are celebrating. We're going back to the AFC Championship Game!

But what we saw wasn't what the replay official upstairs saw. He challenged the fumble that the officials on the field had ruled. All of a sudden the game wasn't over. All of a sudden the fumble was an incomplete pass because after looking at the replay, the officials on the field said Tom Brady's arm was going forward to tuck the ball in. By rule, Charles Woodson knocking it out of his hand made it an incompletion, not a fumble.

We had one time-out left, but I wasn't going to use it. As a result, the Patriots had to send out their kicker, Adam Vinatieri, to try a forty-three-yard field goal with a moving clock. I didn't want to try and "ice" the kicker because I didn't want to give the Patriots' ground crew time for the same thing that had happened in that same stadium in 1982, when a work-release convict used a snowplow to clear a spot for John Smith to kick the winning field goal in New England's 3-0 victory over Miami. Vinatieri was kicking the ball literally out of five inches of snow, into the wind. He made it, sending the game into overtime. In overtime, Vinatieri kicked another field goal out of all that snow. Once again our season ended sooner than it was supposed to.

If my recalling this game is matter-of-fact, it's because it kills me to recall this sequence of plays. It should never have gotten to that point.

Now we went into the locker room. This was Eric Allen's last game as a pro football player. It was the last game Steve Wisniewski and William Thomas, a linebacker who had been with me in Philadelphia, would ever play in the NFL. What do you say? You've got guys who are so pissed, so mad, so upset.

You've got guys feeling they've been cheated out of something.

Sure, if you coach, play or root for the Raiders, you can be all teary eyed about the "tuck rule," but I wasn't going to put that one on the officials. In my opinion, the outcome of the "Snow Bowl" will always come down to 14 Blast. You make that first down, the game's over. We got stuffed. There was some indecision up front about where Bryan Cox was going to be and maybe we didn't come off the ball as fast as we needed to.

Whatever the reason, we didn't account for him and he came in to make the stop.

But the "tuck rule" didn't come into play until after we failed to convert a third-and-one, until after we got off a short punt. As I've always been taught, you get what you deserve.

After four seasons with the Raiders I entered the last year of my contract. My agent, Bob LaMonte, told me that negotiations for a contract extension were going nowhere. That meant I would be coaching in Oakland for another year, provided the Raiders still wanted me. I was prepared to honor my contract and do the best job I could for another season. I wasn't going to try to look any further into the future than that.

Little did I know that the biggest opportunity of my life was about to land on my doorstep.

ELEVEN
Changing Teams Doesn't Mean Changing Expectations

I DON 'T KNOW EXACTLY how I ended up in Tampa. Since the day I arrived here, I decided I wasn't going to look back. I was going to look forward and concentrate on whatever we had to do to make this team a Super Bowl champion.

But I can tell you that in mid-February 2002 I got a call from Al Davis at about one o'clock in the morning. The next thing I know, I've been traded. When I heard what the Buccaneers had agreed to give up for me-first- and second-round picks in 2002, first- and second-round picks in 2003 and $8 million-I just about fell on the floor. As I've said before, I wouldn't have given up a pair of size-9 1/2 turf shoes for me, let alone all those picks and all that money.

It isn't the sort of transaction that you typically associate with a coach, and I know everyone's got a lot of questions about exactly how it all came together. This isn't the place for me to address them. And frankly, I don't have all the answers myself. The bottom line was that I had been in a situation where I didn't know what my future would be beyond another season.

I felt, if the right opportunity presented itself, it would be time for me to move on. Tampa was that opportunity. "We're going to Tampa," I kept telling my wife, over and over, in the aftermath of Al's call.

Even as I said it, I'm not entirely certain I believed it was really happening. But it was. I thought about what the Buccaneers had meant to me and my family after my dad went to work for them in 1982. I thought about all the great times I had had in Tampa after my parents moved there when I started college. About going to training camp with my dad. Throwing passes to the backs he coached. Getting chased out of practice by Phil Krueger. Most of all, I thought about how good a team the Bucs were, especially on defense.

When the details were finally worked out, I had one final phone conversation with Al.

"Well, congratulations," he said.

"Thank you very much," I said. "It's been an honor working with you. I'll never be able to thank you enough."

"Good luck, Butch."

"Good luck to you, too."

The next call I made was to my dad.

"I'm the new head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers," I said. He almost went through the ceiling.

It seemed almost unreal that I was going to be working at One Buc Place, where I had spent so much time while I was in college. I saw the old Coke machine that my dad had bought his Cokes from twenty years earlier. I saw the old showers that I used to shower in after sitting in the sauna-which was also still there-along with other coaches' sons acting like we were bigtimers. Now I was back there as the head coach. Unbelievable.

I knew this wasn't going to be an easy transition. Tony Dungy, my predecessor, had done a hell of a job with the Buccaneers. They had been to the playoffs. They had built a great defense. With the Raiders having signed all the assistant coaches to contract extensions, I wasn't going to be able to have very many familiar faces working with me from that Oakland staff.

One of those assistants, Bill Callahan, was promoted to replace me as head coach. I couldn't have been happier for him. Bill and I grew up together in this business. We share a lot of the same ideas about offensive football and the game in general. We're both just a couple of grinders who believe you can never study too much videotape.

The one guy I knew from the previous Bucs staff was Monte Kiffin, one of the great defensive coordinators in the league.

Every summer I would take my wife and kids on vacation for three or four weeks to a beach bungalow on the Gulf Coast, and Monte had a beach bungalow about six units down from ours. Three or four times every summer we'd go out at night or we'd get up early and talk football. We became really close friends. One of the first things I did after taking the job was let Monte know I wanted to keep him and his defense. Monte has forgotten more about defense than I'll ever know.

Almost a month before I ended up in Tampa, Tony had become the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. He had taken a lot of his offensive coaches to Indianapolis, so I had to fill most of the offensive staff. It wasn't easy because I got the job so late in the offseason. But we were fortunate to hire a good staff, getting some coaches from college and others with NFL experience.

One spot that had already been filled from the outside was offensive line coach. Bill Muir, who had long been one of the top line coaches in the league, was hired for that job, I guess, because of the expectation that Bill Parcells, who had some history with Muir, was going to be the Bucs' new head coach. I called Muir into the office and told him I wanted him to be our offensive coordinator. Bill said he didn't have to have the title, but I wanted him to because I knew he was a strong leader and a top tier offensive coach.