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Rick Stroud, The St.Petersburg Times, published 28 September 1992
The Tampa Bay Bucs are either a pretty good football team or a terrific swingers' club. They pick each other up.
Sunday, the Bucs played a game with mood swings, lead swings, emotional swings and it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing swings.
But it wasn't until Milton Mack swung his arm around Detroit wide receiver Brett Perriman and pulled him down inbounds 3 yards from defeat that time ran out and the Bucs were able to celebrate a heart-stopping 27-23 victory over the Lions at the Silverdome.
Mack's tackle on the game's final play put the brakes on a furious 79-yard drive in the final 49 seconds by Detroit and ended the Bucs' 15-game road losing skid.
But while the Lions came up 3 yards, 9 feet or 108 inches short of a comeback, Tampa Bay quarterback Vinny Testaverde provided a fantastic finish of his own.
Shaking off three interceptions, he completed five passes to drive the Bucs 80 yards in 14 plays for the winning touchdown - a 14-yard toss to tight end Ron Hall with 49 seconds left.
The victory leaves Tampa Bay (3-1) tied for the NFC Central lead with Minnesota and turned the standings upside down on the defending division champion Lions (1-3), who lost for the first time in 12 games in the Silverdome.
Three victories are as many as the Bucs had in 1991.
"We proved to ourselves we can beat a good football team, a division champion, at their place," Bucs coach Sam Wyche said. "You don't have a check big enough to buy the total cumulative emotions in that locker room right now."
To put it mildly, this game was a wild one.
In the final furious 6 1/2 minutes, there were three lead changes, a 42-yard fumble return for a touchdown by Bucs rookie Santana Dotson, an 89-yard kickoff return by the Lions' Mel Gray and two offenses that ate up yards like mole crickets.
But it wasn't until Mack wrestled Perriman down just inbounds at the 3-yard line that the issue was decided.
Before that, it appeared certain the Bucs' reeling defense was going to allow the Lions to drive 82 yards in the final 49 seconds for the winning touchdown.
"I was just thinking, `Get him down,' " Mack said. "I didn't know where I was on the field, but I knew wherever I was at, I had to pull him to the ground. I knew they were out of timeouts. I knew if I made the tackle, that's it. To beat a caliber team like Detroit, that shows everybody what Tampa Bay is about. I don't feel a lot of teams have given us respect. We showed we're going to fight you for 60 minutes."
The Bucs' defense came out swinging against Lions running back Barry Sanders, who was held to 70 yards on 20 carries. In fact, it was Sanders' fourth-quarter fumble of a handoff from Rodney Peete, with the Lions leading 16-13, that started the fireworks.
Dotson picked off the bobble in midair, freed himself from a gridlock of linemen and rumbled 42 yards for a touchdown that left the stunned Lions trailing 20-16 with 6:01 left.
Were Tampa Bay fans thinking the Bucs had this game wrapped up?
"I didn't," Wyche said. "Not with what had to happen next, and it did. We had to kick off. That's put the thrill back in Tampa Bay football, I'll tell you that."
Before Dotson's breathing returned to normal, Gray gathered a kickoff from Ken Willis and raced through a huge gap in the middle of the field for 89 yards and a touchdown.
"The sad thing about it is, they almost won the game on that one big play," Willis said. "Other than that, we kept him in check. We even recovered the one kickoff and I blew the field goal."
True enough, Willis pushed a 36-yard attempt wide right to prevent the Bucs from padding their 10-3 halftime lead after Darrick Brownlow recovered a pooched onside kickoff.
Willis' miss looked bigger when the Bucs sleepwalked to start the second half. On the first play of the third quarter, wide receiver Jeff Campbell streaked past napping safety Darrell Fullington and caught a 78-yard pass from Peete for a touchdown.
Campbell's bomb, Gray's return and 11 penalties for 70 yards made for an uphill fight for Tampa Bay.
"There were a lot of things in that ballgame that we had to overcome," Wyche said. "We had a lot of holding penalties, a lot of penalties that kept their drives alive or put us back in the hole, and our guys overcame it."
Nobody overcame more than Testaverde.
He entered the game without an interception but was picked off three times Sunday. He finished 17-of-30 for 248 yards and a touchdown. But his final interception on a pass intended for a well-covered Lawrence Dawsey in the end zone killed a fourth-quarter drive.
"I didn't play very well, but I hung in there and kept my head up," Testaverde said. "I made two very poor decisions. (Dawsey) was covered. I saw him nod like he was going to go back to the post, but it wasn't his route. It was my fault; that's the end result. "
But all was forgiven when Testaverde was 5-of-6 during the final drive. The prettiest play was the last one: Testaverde faking a handoff that sent Lions defenders racing in one direction, Hall dropping to a knee and releasing the other way by himself to receive the 14-yard game-winner.
"I saw Ron and he was wide open," Testaverde said. "When I threw it, the ball seemed like it was in the air forever. I was hoping that he wouldn't drop it. And after he caught it, I was hoping that he wouldn't fall. All these things are running through my mind. I was kind of relieved, and yet, I knew they were getting the ball back. Actually, before that, I'm sure everybody was worried about the kickoff. It was one of those things where you're up, you're down, and back and forth."
And if Mack doesn't hang onto Perriman's belt loops, it all goes for naught. "You've got to give credit to our offense," Dotson said. "They went through all the noise and the bashing that they took about not being able to operate in the noise and in domes. They went 80 yards to go ahead. If it raises eyebrows, it raises eyebrows."
Maybe that's just the look of a winner.
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