|
|
 |
Rick Stroud, The St.Petersburg Times, published 10 November 1997
It was a play in the fourth quarter that will soon be forgotten, but it reminded everyone of how the Buccaneers can still occasionally take your breath away.
Trent Dilfer danced around in his end zone, avoided a safety and started upfield with one eye on the first-down marker and another on bone-crunching linebackers of the Falcons.
He should have skidded to a stop. Plopped down on the turf like it was the living-room sofa. But instead, he took a shot in the ribs and lay motionless on the field for several minutes until the wind came back into his body.
You could consider it symbolic. It was Dilfer and his team refusing to continue to slide.
Dilfer passed for two touchdowns and Mike Alstott and Warrick Dunn each ran for a score and enabled the Bucs to roll up 199 yards on the ground as Tampa Bay matched its highest point total of the season in beating the Falcons 31-10 Sunday at the Georgia Dome.
It was the biggest margin of victory on the road for the Bucs in team history and at 7-3, allowed them to keep pace just a game behind Green Bay (8-2) and Minnesota (8-2) in the NFC Central.
It also eclipsed the Bucs' win total for the '96 season with six games remaining and left them just a victory shy of breaking a streak of 14 straight losing seasons.
"I've really been upset the last month, and I've held in a lot more than I've said," Dilfer said. "I was very disappointed with the way we played the last month. We needed to come out and play a team we felt we were better than and play good. It's encouraging. The challenge here is it gets real hard. You've got to keep getting better. When we play our game, we're tough to beat. But we hadn't played our game since the Miami game."
The Bucs played their game all right. They controlled the ball with their dynamic running duo of Dunn (14 carries, 76 yards, 1 TD rushing, 1 reception) and Alstott (14-77, 1 TD). They played great special teams with Shelton Quarles recovering two fumbled punts by the Falcons' Todd Kinchen. And the defense sacked quarterback Chris Chandler five times - three by nose tackle Brad Culpepper.
They did it in front of an announced crowd of 46,018, at least half of which were dressed in red and pewter and included former Bucs quarterback Doug Williams, who watched the game from Tampa Bay's sideline for the first time since he left the team after the '82 season.
"It was a good win for us all the way around," Bucs coach Tony Dungy said. "We talked about it (Saturday) night. We wanted to see all our units play well. We got good performances from our special teams. I thought our offense was a little crisper than it had been in the last few weeks and defensely, we got the job done when we needed to."
For 36 1/2 minutes, the Falcons made it interesting. After all, this was a team that has not won back-to-back games since September 1995. But the Bucs put together three of the most marvelous minutes of football they've played in more than a month and broke a 7-7 tie with 10 unanswered points before halftime.
First, Dilfer completed three third-down passes - the last a beautifully thrown 24-yarder to Dunn for a touchdown - to drive the Bucs 73 yards for a score.
Then the defense forced the Falcons to go three-and-out, and thanks to a short punt by Atlanta's Dan Stryzinski, the Bucs got a 54-yard field goal by Michael Husted with four seconds left to pad their lead to 17-7. "That was really a pleasing thing to see our offense take it down there and score," Dungy said. "Defensively, we held them in there. We didn't give them a return drive where they got points. And then the short punt and Michael nailing the field goal just gave us a lot of momentum going in."
The Falcons defense entered the game with 36 sacks, most of any team in the NFL and seven more than Tampa Bay. But it was shut out by the Bucs offensive line.
By the end of the day, the Bucs defensive line had closed the gap, sacking Chandler five times with the trifecta by Culpepper.
"We'd been hearing all week how they're just like us, and tops in the league," Bucs defensive end Chidi Ahanotu said. "We see them on the field. We felt they weren't as good as us. We came out here trying to prove something. We always come out and try to compete against the other defense. I think today we showed who's better."
Ahanotu had one of the Bucs' sacks, but his dance celebration ("It's the Men In Black," he said) wound up costing the Bucs 15 yards for taunting. The penalty sustained the Falcons' third-quarter drive and led to a field goal. But overall, the offense had more reason to boogie. Alstott and Dunn, who had not combined for more than 62 yards rushing in each of the past three games, finally got untracked.
The Bucs had a little help from their special teams and the Falcons. Kinchen fumbled two short kicks by Sean Landeta that were recovered by Quarles.
The first led to Alstott's highlight reel 47-yard TD run, longest of his career, just 55 seconds into the game. Alstott broke free of Anthony Pleasant's arm tackle and kept his balance when safety William White tried to cut his legs at the 7-yard line.
The second recovery by Quarles of Kinchen's fumble in the fourth quarter led to Dunn's 30-yard TD burst.
The 199 rushing yards were the most since the Bucs had 217 at Green Bay a month ago.
"When we were winning, that was the case," Dunn said. "It was a shoestring here and there. I could definitely see daylight. Sometimes it's almost there. We're going to break them now and then."
Most of all, the Bucs just needed to break out of their monthlong malaise. Last week, they narrowly dodged the winless Colts to snap a three-game losing streak. But they had not clicked on all three phases of the game - offense, defense and special teams - since their 5-0 start in September.
"Some people call it hitting the wall," Dilfer said. "I think every team goes through it. It stunk that two of them were at home. We had two such bad performances at home. That really got to me. There was so much to look forward to if we just kept going. And we didn't. We let it slide. It got very frustrating. You could just taste the possibilities. And we were letting them slip away."
Dilfer completed only 12 of 20 passes for 150 yards. But his touchdown passes of 24 yards to Dunn and 14 yards to tight end Dave Moore were threaded like needlepoint. "We're paid a lot of money to make those throws," he said. Dilfer also epitomized the Bucs' effort in the fourth quarter when he scrambled out of the end zone to avoid a safety and took on linebacker Cornelius Bennett, suffering bruised ribs that forced him to leave the game for two plays.
When it was over, the Bucs could engage in a ritual that they haven't enjoyed since Williams was quarterbacking - scoreboard watching.
"It is fun," Dilfer said. "It's kind of what happened to us when we were 5-0. People started saying if we can beat Green Bay, it would be a three-game lead and da da da da da. Next thing you know, you're 5-3 and one game out. If you start looking ahead, if you start doing what I was doing and everybody else was doing at 5-0, you lose that edge."
The Bucs will have bigger games this season. Even bigger days. Especially for Dilfer, whose wife Cassandra is expecting to deliver the couple's second child, a son, Trevin Scott.
"Big day tomorrow," Dilfer said. "Bigger day than today."
|
|
|
| |
| |
|