Tampa Snaps Playoff Drought

Dan Turk was in shock.

And his Washington Redskins were out of the playoffs, 14-13 losers Saturday to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC divisional playoff game.

Turk, the Redskins’ long-snapping center, had seen his team’s high-powered offense shut down by the overpowering Buccaneer defense.

He had seen Tampa Bay running back Mike Alstott avoid a wall of bodies to find the end zone.

He had seen Tampa Bay rookie quarterback Shaun King grow up before his eyes to lead his team to a pair of second-half touchdowns.

Yet with all that, with just over a minute to play at Raymond James Stadium, the Redskins still had a chance to pull out the victory.

All it would take was a 51-yard field goal by Redskin kicker Brett Conway, within his range.

But first, it would take a successful snap by Turk, something that should be a snap for a 15-year veteran.

But it wasn’t. The snap was horrible, a ball that bounced a couple of times before it reached holder Brad Johnson.

Johnson finally got control of the ball and stood up only to find, to his horror, that his teammates had failed to react to the crisis. Nobody was going out. Nobody was offering him a target.

He motioned frantically, but it was too late. Buccaneer defender Floyd Young got ahold of Johnson from behind to sack him.

The crowd of 65,835 erupted. Fireworks exploded and the cannons on the Buccaneer pirate ship in the end zone were fired off to celebrate the bullet that the Buccaneers had dodged.

With 1:08 to play, the Buccaneers had held off a final Redskin charge, sending them into the NFC championship game for the second time in their quarter-century of existence.

The Buccaneers will play the winner of today’s St. Louis Ram-Minnesota Viking game.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Turk said afterward. “I am so sick. This is something I have done all my life. It slipped. I don’t know what happened.”

The same might have been echoed by the rest of the Redskins, who had entered the fourth quarter of a postseason game on 20 previous occasions with a lead and had never before lost that lead.

Washington came into this game with the NFL’s No. 2 offense in the regular season and a 27-13 victory over the Detroit Lions in their playoff opener last week.

But they also came in with understandable concerns. For one thing, they were facing the NFC’s No. 1 defense and the third best in the league. For another, the Redskins’ leading rusher, Stephen Davis, the heart of their offense, was limping into this game with a sprained left ankle and a sprained right knee.

For the first 30 minutes, Davis didn’t do much, gaining only 35 yards in a dozen carries.

But Tampa Bay wasn’t exactly lighting up the scoreboard either. Conway’s 28-yard, second-quarter field goal was the only score of the first half.

The Tampa Bay crowd had been uncharacteristically quiet in that first half, but by the time many of them were back in their seats following the break, they were downright depressed.

Washington opened the second half with the first electrifying play of the day, Brian Mitchell taking the second-half kickoff at his goal line, cutting to his right and racing down the sideline 100 yards to the end zone to boost the Redskins into a 10-0 lead.

Only Tampa Bay kicker Martin Gramatica had a shot at Mitchell.

And he was useless.

Mitchell straight-armed Gramatica at his own 42 to dispose of the kicker without breaking stride.

Considering that Tampa Bay had only 69 yards of offense in the first half, it didn’t look good for the NFC Central champions, winners of 11 of 16 in the regular season.

It looked even worse when Washington tacked on another Conway field goal, this one from 48 yards, midway through the third quarter to boost the Redskins into a 13-0 lead.

But King, the first rookie to start a postseason game since the L.A. Raiders’ Todd Marinovich had done so in 1991 and bidding to become the first rookie quarterback to win in the playoffs since the L.A. Rams’ Pat Haden had done so in 1976, just shrugged.

“I knew we were still going to get the ball seven or eight more times,” King said, “and all we needed was two scores.”

That’s all. No sweat, even though they had yet to put a point on the board.

King’s optimism was finally rewarded late in the third quarter when Buccaneer safety John Lynch, racing over toward the sideline, intercepted a Johnson pass intended for receiver Albert Connell.

That gave King the ball at his own 27-yard line. From there, with a 16-yard pass to Warrick Dunn, a 17-yard pass to Dave Moore and 31 yards on a pass-interference call, the Buccaneers found themselves on the Washington two-yard line.

The ball went to Alstott, who has made a career of finding daylight where it appears there is only darkness. This time, he started right, outran diving linebacker Derek Smith, ran smack into linebackers James Francis and Kurt Gouveia, bounced off them, reversed his field, headed left, and outran defensive end Ndukwe Kalu and linebacker Greg Jones to the end zone.

It was a furious run of about six yards to gain two.

Ho-hum.

“I tried to go right and there was nothing there,” Alstott said. “So I went back. I wanted to wind up with positive yardage. I didn’t want to lose any yardage. I was bouncing and bouncing and there it was.”

That still left Tampa Bay six points short, 13-7.

In the fourth quarter, the Buccaneer defense responded again. Defensive lineman Steve White forced a Johnson fumble that was recovered by Warren Sapp.

Back in business at the Washington 32-yard line, King drove his team to the one, where he faked a run, pulled the ball back and saw tight end John Davis a step ahead of Jones, the defender. Even as Kalu collapsed on King, the rookie calmly tossed a soft spiral that Davis clutched in the end zone to even the score before Gramatica converted the point after for the lead.

The Buccaneers would finish with only 186 yards of total offense to 157 for Washington. King would throw for only 157 yards and Alstott would gain only 24 on the ground.

No matter.

The Buccaneers, as usual, got all they needed from their defense.

“What you saw out there is what we do,” Sapp said. “We bang you and punch you in the mouth for four quarters and see if you have any teeth left. If you have no teeth you have no bite, and they had no bite at the end of the game.”