Column About the Bucs - Sound Familiar?

[TennesseeCarl]

The local press seems to be poised to jump off the bandwagon.

http://bucs.tbo.com/bucs/MGAO337C9TC.html

[@DCGoldPants]

its them against the world. Can't you all tell that everyone has picked against Tampa. Now they are finally coming togther? blah blah blah. How about the papers in tampa try the concept of recycling.....take out a paper from the last few years and just sell it again.

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[bulldog]

no team in the NFL over the past three years has had as much written about their "potential" than the Bucs.

yet, we see other teams such as St. Louis and Baltimore going out and making the plays to win championships.

Sapp is a disgrace. ONE sack in 6 weeks? And he said he was going to break the sack record of 22? Well he only has 21 to go in 10 games!

I would like to see the points per game averages for the Bucs offense this year vs. last year. I think they will show us that the addition of Brad Johnson has not made much of a difference to the bottom line productivity of the unit.

He may have thrown for more yards than Shaun King, but the team is getting in the end zone less.

Sounds familiar doesn't it friends?

We tried to tell them about Brad.

Just like Dallas fans tried to tell us about Deion.

Evidently, none of us learn except through pain.

[Fitz]

There seems to be a whole lot of dissatisfaction in the NFL this year. If you change the names, the discussions on the Panthers boards sound almost identical to the rants we were having here last week (and next week if we lose to the Giants). In Kansas City, they're ready to burn our old buddy Trent at the stake. Here's a typical kind of column from the Kansas City Star -

JOE POSNANSKI:

Green needs to step up when game is on line

By JOE POSNANSKI - Columnist

Date: 10/26/01 00:20

Trent Green might be the very best quarterback in the NFL when his team trails by two touchdowns or more. Nobody can score that meaningless touchdown like these Chiefs. You could see it Thursday night, the way Trent Green drove his offense right down the field in the last minute, not distracted at all by the crowd leaving or intimidated whatsoever by the Indianapolis Colts already celebrating on the sideline.

Green threw a touchdown strike to Larry Parker with 4 seconds left.

He's really good at that.

Trouble is, he's not quite as good when the game is actually on the line, and that's the story with the Chiefs right now. The Chiefs, every last one of them, talk a lot about how they have not been blown out in any game this season. That might be true. But the truth goes on -- it has taken everything they had just not to get blown out..

They have scored an awful lot of "Hey, look, we kept the game close!" touchdowns this season.

When it counts, when it matters, they have found ways to lose. The Chiefs had a chance Thursday. They were down by just a touchdown with just about 2 minutes left, ball on the Indianapolis 11, and this was the time for Trent Green. The Chiefs gave up a first-round pick for him for just this reason, so he would find ways to get the Chiefs into the end zone at the end of games.

And here's what he did: He threw an interception that even Elvis Grbac would not have thrown, a flat, low, nothing pass into at least double coverage (some observers said there was actually triple coverage, but we're giving the benefit of the doubt there) that was picked off by safety Idrees Bashir but could have been picked off by at least one other defender.

"He didn't throw it high enough," Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil said. "He kind of underthrew it," the intended receiver, Mikhael Ricks, said.

"Maybe I could have put more air under it," Green himself said.

Yeah. Maybe. For instance, throwing it to I-70 might have been a good idea. Look, we all know that the Chiefs are rebuilding here, and Green doesn't have many weapons around him, and you have to be patient, but that pass was ridiculous. It was worse than a rookie mistake.

It's the fourth time this year he has thrown an interception in the end zone, and, oh yeah, an Indianapolis defender dropped one earlier in the game.

Then the next drive, with the game already over, Green looked like John Unitas.

This a scary trend, no doubt about it. You know, when the Chiefs have trailed by two touchdowns or more, Green has completed 22 of 33 passes for 307 yards and three touchdowns. He has looked confident. He has looked like a man in control.

And the rest of the time, he has often looked hopeless, throwing off his back foot, looking panicked in the pocket, screaming at players every time he makes a bad throw. With the Chiefs still in games, he has thrown 11 interceptions and five touchdown passes, and he has barely completed half his throws.

This just can't happen. Now that this season is lost, the Chiefs need Green to be more of a leader, not less of one. It's not like he's a kid. He's 31 years old. He's been in this system for a few years. Thursday, after the game, he yucked it up in the locker room, took an hour getting ready before answering questions, and he evaded the blame considerably better than he evades rushing linemen.

"That question should be directed to the sidelines," he said when asked about the team's frightening misuse of timeouts.

"We had a lot of dropped passes," he said of the first half, when the offense looked utterly helpless.

"We just didn't connect," he said of that awful interception.

"We put up 28 points," he said defensively when it was mentioned that the team was lousy in the red zone again.

No, no, no, we've been through all that already here in Kansas City, Trent. We've had a quarterback who talked about how they couldn't throw the ball and catch it, too. We've had a quarterback who, after playing the single worst gave I've ever seen a professional quarterback play, shrugged and said, "I thought I was pretty good." We've had all that.

What Kansas City needs is a quarterback who stands tall when the game actually matters, who doesn't suddenly turn Pro Bowl when the score is out of hand.

See, Trent, Kansas City needs a quarterback who doesn't throw that horrendous interception with the game on the line, or at least one who says "I messed up" when he does.

All content © 2001 The Kansas City Star

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[NavyDave]

They have to lose a few more before its time to start looking at putting nails in their coffin.

I do wish someone else can come along and take out the Rams though

[bulldog]

Kansas City is in the same boat as the Redskins. They have a few very talented players that are building blocks but don't have many veterans in their prime years to make the club a consistent winner.

Green, despite the hype, has never proven to be a top quarterback. He played the back end of a 0-7 schedule for the Redskins in 1998 with no pressure on him and did well.

After being hurt in St. Louis in 1999, he played off the bench for Kurt Warner in 2000 with some fine efforts but losses to the Redskins and Bucs as well.

How can you look at that and then put pressure on the guy to deliver like Brett Favre?

It simply AIN'T gonna happen.

And certainly not when his receiving corps has been decimated by the loss of Morris and Minnis and the fact of Derrick Alexander's loss of speed at age 31.

It is Green and Gonzalez against the world on offense.

The Chiefs don't have any other real threats. Holmes did well against the Redskins, but is a streaky player you can't count on week to week to be consistent.

[@DCGoldPants]

Trent Green showed last year that it wasn't Kurt Warner that is so good, thats the Rams indoor, turf offense that is scoring points. Green came in and posted money numbers like Warner was.....now in KC it's not working cause they don't play inside and its not the same Arena league players. Those peeps in KC shouldn't be all the shocked.

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[bulldog]

Green doesn't have the same downfield arm that Warner does and when he was the quarterback the Rams were not as dynamic in the long passing game. He posted good numbers as a lot of players would with the surrounding talent, but also showed the propensity to thrwo some untimely picks that cost the team.

Green is another player that has to show he can make it through a 16 game season healthy and as a consistent starting quarterback.

His experience has come in drips and drabs, but nothing definitive enough to put him among the elite quarterbacks.

He may be 31, but he lacks the playing experience of a player his age, in his 9th season due to his late emergence.

People are expecting too much of a player whose starting experience adds up to a year and a half in the NFL or roughly 24 games.

How good was Rich Gannon or even Brett Favre after 24 games?

[@DCGoldPants]

I think if you average yards per game and QB rating over time for the 2000 season, Trent Green actually did better than Warner. Of course numbers don't tell the whole story but if Green could have something like 2K yards in what? 5 games? and Warner didn't average that much or have as high of a rating then it shows it really is the system and not the QB. Can you imagine how good someone like Favre would be in the system? it would be insane. Breaking all kinds of QB records.

[ by Bufford on October 26, 2001.]

[bulldog]

Kurt Warner is one of the most accurate qb's in the NFL, he also stands in there and takes a lot of punishment to deliver the ball where it needs to go.

To underestimate him by saying that Favre would be just as successful, so therefore Warner's performance is not that impressive, is just ridiculous.

Favre is a Hall of Fame quarterback. Yes, I am sure John Elway could be plugged into the Rams offense and be successful too.

That doesn't diminish what Warner has done.

For whatever reason, when Warner is in the lineup the Rams are tough to beat.

The Redskins knocked Trent Green around last year and forced him into making some mistakes that lead to a Washington victory.

Trent's problem is that he doesn't have a deep arm and that limits what an offense can call when he is in there.

With Kurt, the ENTIRE offense can be utilized. Same with Favre.

That's what makes them special players.

[@DCGoldPants]

Sorry Bulldog, I just don't agree.

I think Warner is the right QB for that system but he'd fail if he had to lead a team that played outdoors somewhere like New England, Seattle, Miami. Where the weather isn't always nice....it gets cold,rainy or both.

He's shown his weakness in the rain last year and when people start swooning over him I think its an insult to Elway, Favre, Aikman...etc.

Really...I know he's awsome in the Rams offensive system. He wins the games he needs to and rarely is put in the situations where he is tested against the elements along with another team.

I just think when history looks back on his career and sees mostly games played indoors with conditioned air and no wind, it will be frowned on. After the middle of Nov, they don't play one game outdoors that's north of Carolina...maybe one. Its not their fault the schedule is like that but its the truth. When the Ravens were claiming the meanest D in history because of the points they allowed, people said that they played very week teams in their division like Cincy, Clev and Jax. Now when people claim how awsome the Rams are on offense I gotta think "well yeah, indoors or in nice weather...besides that they struggle from the few times we've seen them do it"

thats all, nothing more, nothing less.

[ by Bufford on October 26, 2001.]

[Brave]

Warner has only been around for a little over 2 seasons. It's a little early to proclaim that "he'd fail" to lead a team that played outdoors because at this point that is an unknown. You can't make a statement like that accurately based on a small number of games.

To put him in with the top QBs in history isn't fair at this point, though his play SO FAR has been stellar. Neither is it fair to label him a bust outside of a dome. All great QBs have bad games in just about every situation and it takes quite awhile to find patterns to success and failure ... if there are any to be found.

[The Sisko]

I hear you Brave, but I tend to think the way Bufford does not just about Warner but about dome teams in general. There's a reason a dome team hadn't won a Super Bowl until the Rams did it a couple of years ago. Eventually, they have to travel to a place where at the time of year football is played their uni's get wet and dirty and their shoes get muddy and heavy.

Don't get me wrong. They're a good team, a d@mn good team and all things being equal I wish we'd fired Norv earlier and bumped Martz up to replace him. However, the fact remains that Warner and the Lambs were lucky to have a weak schedule that gave them home field advantage year before last and sadly may pull off the same this year. But that's the way it is and there's no point in whining about it.