Fiery Gruden Brought Bucs Out of the Cold

To win the Super Bowl last week, all the Tampa Bay Buccaneers needed was a cheerleader.

Last year’s brilliant coach, Tony Dungy, wasn’t. This year’s, Jon Gruden, is.

And it took no more than that to make the underachieving Buccaneers the masters of pro football and the creators, maybe, of the NFL’s next dynasty.

It was four days after Christmas last month, on a very cold day in Illinois, that Gruden first showed he could fire up a team that could do everything -- every last thing -- except fire itself up.

Though they beat the unimpressive Chicago Bears by only 15-0 that freezing day, the newly high-spirited Buccaneers signaled, with that unimpressive result, that a new era was dawning in the NFL.

For never before in all their years had these very good players won anywhere in cold weather.

Nor, in Illinois, did they skillfully execute Gruden’s plays. They just responded to the dynamism of an inspirational new leader, who had let them know that, for a great team, the climate is never cold.

Like Green Bay

Three weeks thereafter, on another cold day in Pennsylvania -- where the Buccaneers had always lost in winter weather -- they leaned on their new cold-day confidence to play even more efficiently, eliminating Philadelphia, 27-10.

So when they found themselves on a Florida-like day in California last week, they could with great ease smash the AFC-champion Oakland Raiders, 48-21.

It’s worth noting that Vince Lombardi’s foremost asset 40-odd years ago as the NFL’s most impressive winner of all time was his ability to inspire football players. Just as Gruden did in this new century, Lombardi in the late 1950s inherited a team of talented players who couldn’t win for losing.

That was at Green Bay, where in the next decade Lombardi won an unprecedented five NFL titles with his group of underachievers, who were a match for Gruden’s.

One of the Packer quarterbacks when Lombardi took over, Bart Starr, was as widely discredited at the time as Gruden’s man Brad Johnson was this year.

With a cheerleader for a head coach, Starr swiftly evolved into an all-pro as the Packers evolved into one of the most famous of the NFL’s dynasty teams.

Built to Last

The next question for the Buccaneers is what it almost always is for any winner after a Super Bowl game: Is a dynasty within sight? This time the first-week answer is that this team is more likely than most Super Bowl champions to win for two or three more years.

The defense, built by Dungy, was made to last. It might not be able to withstand the loss of more than one or two of its devastating defensive players to retirement or free agency, but it might not have to.

If Tampa’s owners could afford $8 million for a coach, they can spare a few more million to keep the talent they have to have to stay on top.

Keeping Johnson should be a lock. Who’d want him? Yet he’s made a serviceable quarterback for Gruden.

The best guess is that Tampa Bay will be even stronger and better next season, at least, and probably longer.

On Pushing Athletes

In time, the Gruden mystique will wear off in Tampa as it did for Lombardi in Green Bay. Then the Buccaneers will start downhill, and that’s the trouble with spirited leaders. In time, their screams and warnings wear out their players.

Last season in Oakland, where Gruden spent four years, the Raiders finally began to tire of his yelling and challenging, as owner Al Davis realized when he let him go. At first, inspirational leadership inspires, but eventually it makes people nervous.

Lombardi said he was retiring not because he was tired of football but because he could no longer think of new ways to motivate the same old athletes.

Beyond any doubt, football players have to be pushed to succeed, as Dungy, back in Indianapolis, must by now realize. But they can be pushed only so often and so far before they begin to push back.

Although fire-filled coaches tend to be the most successful, the laid-back Southern-gentlemen types, such as Dungy and Bobby Bowden at Florida State, can have longer careers.

Raiders Must Run

As for the Raiders, it isn’t likely -- and it probably isn’t true -- that they’re a slow, old team whose slow, old players will have to be replaced before they can win it all.

They’re aging, sure, but aging athletes who keep themselves in physical condition can continue to play good football indefinitely, as Hall of Fame coach George Allen proved long ago.

These particular Raiders have always been slow. Did you ever see a swift Jerry Rice? A speeding Tim Brown? A sprinting Rich Gannon?

In this year’s Super Bowl, the greater speed of the Buccaneers was one of the decision-making forces, clearly, but earlier in the season, and in the playoffs, the Raiders’ lack of speed didn’t keep them from winning the AFC championship.

To throw out gifted players just to be playing with faster but less-talented types doesn’t make much sense and probably won’t appeal to Davis.

If the Raiders bring back their old players next season, they can win the AFC again.

But in the immediate future, don’t look for the Raiders or any other opponent to oust Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers, next time, won’t be the underdog.