Posted: Wed September 24, 1997
It was a classy act in garbage time. With 1:13 left in Sunday
night's game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Miami
Dolphins, Bucs quarterback Trent Dilfer walked to the line of
scrimmage, looked over at Dolphins coach Jimmy Johnson and
pointed down at the turf of Houlihan Stadium.
Tampa Bay, leading 31-21, had the ball on the Miami 14. By
motioning toward the ground, Dilfer said later, he wasn't
pointing out the direction in which the Dolphins are headed. "I
was letting Jimmy know I was going to take a knee," Dilfer
explained. "Those guys coached their butts off. We didn't need
to run up the score."
So it has come to this: Dilfer taking pity on Johnson, the
erstwhile sad-sack signal-caller going out of his way to
preserve the dignity of the coach who had ripped him only 20
months earlier. Why not? The 4-0 Bucs are making the implausible
seem routine. There was Dilfer, a year removed from a 35.6
quarterback rating, dissecting the Dolphins. When he wasn't
watching second-year fullback Mike Alstott gash Miami's interior
line—Alstott, who had 95 yards on 18 carries, is John Riggins
without the Mohawk—Dilfer was completing 18 of 24 passes for
248 yards and four touchdowns. A first-quarter interception by
Dolphins linebacker Zach Thomas, who made a stellar play by
deflecting the ball before catching it, was the first pick of a
Dilfer pass this season and one of two incompletions Dilfer had
in the first half.
Afterward, as he commended the Bucs and touched grimly on the
inadequacies of his own 2-2 team, the normally larger-than-life
Johnson seemed deflated. Who could blame him if, for the
briefest of moments, he pondered what might have been? Less than
two years ago, both of these franchises sought his services. He
chose Miami, citing Dilfer—"a guy I don't have faith in" were
his words—as one reason to avoid Tampa Bay.
So the Bucs interviewed Tony Dungy, an NFL assistant for the
previous 15 years. Dungy, who is black, had interviewed for head
jobs before. The word was, he was too cerebral. (Nor, it seems,
did the color of his skin work in his favor.) Having concluded
that intelligence in a coach might be a good thing, Tampa Bay in
January 1996 hired Dungy, who in little more than one season has
transformed one of the losingest franchises in pro sports into
the new scourge of the NFC. Circle it on your calendar: Oct. 5,
Buccaneers versus Packers at Lambeau Field. For the first time
in memory, the Battle of the Bays will mean something.
Don't be deceived by the 10-10 records Dungy and Johnson took
out of Sunday's game. While Miami has lost five of its last nine
outings, Tampa Bay has won nine of its last 11. What we had on
Sunday was one handsomely remodeled house and another that is
nowhere near ready to shed its PARDON OUR APPEARANCE sign.
Don't despair, Dolphins. Here, free of charge, is a blueprint
for success from your NFL neighbors to the northwest.
HAVE FAITH IN YOUR QUARTERBACK
What is Johnson up to? After pointing to Dan Marino as one of
the primary reasons he chose Miami over Tampa Bay, he has,
perversely, taken a can of spray paint to the Marino legend. He
has discussed—heresy of heresies—the possibility of benching
Marino in favor of Craig Erickson, and last Thursday, when asked
if Marino still had the old magic, offered this tepid
endorsement: "He's not the quarterback that he used to be; I
think everybody knows that. But we can still win games with Dan.
Is he going to play great every week? Probably not. But we can
still win with him. So we go with what we got."
We go with what we got? Should Babe Laufenberg consider coming
out of retirement?
If ever a coach had reason to dump on his quarterback, it was
Dungy, who watched last season as Dilfer threw one touchdown
pass against 10 interceptions in his first five games. Asked to
explain why he stuck with Dilfer, Dungy recalled an experience
from his previous role, as the Minnesota Vikings' defensive
coordinator. "Around 1992 or '93, walking down through the
stands at Lambeau Field after a game against the Packers, I
heard people saying, 'We're never going to win with [Brett]
Favre. He's too hyper; he makes mistakes at the worst times.'
Three years later he's the player of the year. If a guy doesn't
produce, we're quick to say, 'Hey, he's a bust.' But you can't
do that with quarterbacks."
|
