From punch line to Powerhouse: Tampa Bay's amazing journey to the Super Bowl championship

Football Digest, April, 2003 by Barry Wilner

JOHN LYNCH, THE SUPERB strong safety for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, summed up the 2002 season perfectly as his team was preparing to face the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl 37. The Buccaneers had the NFL's top defense and the Raiders had the top offense, and Lynch smiled when he contemplated this unprecedented matchup. "This has been the best, wildest NFL season ever, in my opinion," he said. "How else should it end but with No. 1 vs. No. 1?"

Raiders defensive tackle Sam Adams took it a step further, saying, "I'd even pay to see it." It certainly was something to see. By storming to the championship with their stunning 48-21 rout of the Raiders, the Buccaneers placed an exclamation point on an unparalleled season for the nation's most popular sport.

The regular season featured a record 25 overtime games. It had one of the craziest scrambles for playoff berths the league ever has seen, with 19 teams still breathing entering the final weekend.

There were incredible comebacks, capped by the San Francisco 49ers' 24-point rally to beat the New York Giants 39-38 in the wild-card round of the play-offs--a game that finished with a huge officiating gaffe that even NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue publicly criticized. New stars also emerged, from quarterback Chad Pennington with the New York Jets and tight end Jeremy Shockey with the Giants to running back Clinton Portis with the Denver Broncos and defensive end Julius Peppers with the Carolina Panthers.

It was a season filled with highlights, but the most memorable was the Buccaneers--yes, the Buccaneers--soaring to the championship. Who would have thought the words "champions" and "Buccaneers" ever would be uttered in the same sentence?

Consider the checkered way in which it all began: After becoming the only modern-era team to lose all of its games in a season--in its inaugural season in 1976--Tampa Bay then dropped its first 12 games the next year.

While the Buccaneers did have some success the next few years, they soon fell into a funk that lasted nearly two decades. Over one 14-year period, they never finished a season with a winning record. In 13 of those seasons--including 12 in a row--they lost at least 10 games. All of that losing led to tremendous opportunities to improve through the draft, but the team generally squandered its picks.

It wasn't until the Glazer family bought the team in 1995 and named Rich McKay the general manager that the Bucs finally started to make some progress. McKay brought in Tony Dungy to coach the team in 1996, and Dungy rapidly changed the atmosphere, attitude, and talent base. He put together a fearsome defense that rocked the league and made the Buccaneers competitive every season from 1997 through 2001.

But Dungy's inability to lift the Buccaneers to the Super Bowl level led to his firing following the 2001 season, a move that was unpopular in Tampa. Making matters worse, the team's flawed, drawn-out search for a new coach in early 2002 became a running joke. (You expected something different from the Bucs?)

Bill Parcells agreed to a contact, then backed out; McKay suggested that the team hire Marvin Lewis, but the GM was overruled by the Glazers; and another candidate, then-San Francisco coach Steve Mariucci, asked for extra time to discuss Tampa Bay's offer with his family. While Mariucci was thinking the matter through, the Glazers decided to give two No. 1 draft choices, two No. 2s, and $8 million to the Raiders in exchange for their coach, Jon Gruden.

It seemed like a steep price at the time, but is there any doubt now that the deal was worthwhile? "I want to thank Coach Gruden for what he did," Malcolm Glazer said following the Super Bowl. "He came from heaven, and he brought us to heaven. We were waiting for the right man, and the right man came: Jon Gruden."

Gruden helped the Buccaneers expel many of their demons, most notably their cold-weather curse. Prior to Gruden, they had never won a game in temperatures below 40 degrees, but they did so twice in 2002: at Champaign, Ill., in the season finale against the Chicago Bears and then against the Eagles at Philadelphia in the NFC Championship Game.

That victory in Philadelphia, where the Buccaneers dominated the Eagles before a hostile crowd in the final game ever at Veterans Stadium, might have been more impressive than the win over Oakland in file Super Bowl. "By winning in Philly when all of you said we couldn't do it in the cold, I think we proved ourselves," All-Pro defensive tackle Warren Sapp told the media. We showed the world that all that stuff meant nothing."

But the Bucs still had a little more they needed to show the world, and the way they did it was remarkable. Not only did Oakland have a powerhouse offense, but it also had a roster brimming with players who had Super Bowl experience. Linebacker Bill Romanowski had four Super Bowl rings; Jerry Rice, the game's best receiver ever, had three; safety Rod Woodson, a future Hall-of-Famer, had one; and Adams had one.

The Bucs? Well, they could boast wideout Keenan McCardell ... barely. He won a Super Bowl with file Washington Redskins as a rookie in 1991, but he was on injured reserve at the time.