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Throwdown: Bucs vs. Redskins

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Published: November 23, 2007

Each week during the season, The Tampa Tribune will challenge a columnist from the Bucs' opposing city to a Throwdown, to determine the superior city - and which team will come out ahead. This week's Throwdown features the Tribune's Martin Fennelly against Paul Woody of The Richmond Times-Dispatch. (Who's the winner? Be sure to vote, and to comment below).

Bucs: The (Politically) Correct Call

Martin Fennelly, The Tampa Tribune

Do you have a vacuum store with a big fake monkey outside it? Do you have a pirate ship? Do you have leaves that stay the same color all year 'round, none of that confusing 'When, exactly, do the cherry blossoms bloom?"

No, of course not, if you did, you'd be Tampa. Instead, you have all those tourist traps, those "historical" buildings, like the Capitol, the Washington Monument (we have several taller buildings), not to mention the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, the White House, blah, blah, blah.

You call that history?

Even been to Ybor City?

Ever see how real cigars are made?

We're not trying to disrespect Washington D.C. After all, "The Exorcist" was filmed there. I'll never forget Linda Blair's head going completely around. It's on Dick Cheney's list of favorite comedies.

Your football team is in town. It's apparently safe to leave your city - at last report, Hillary is in Iowa with the people, you know Hillary, just plain folk, milking cows, churning butter, eating the still beating heart of that lamb when no one's looking.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was Christmas shopping at the mall, pausing only to press the Salvation Army for complete withdrawal. Then it was off to bury her nose in that bookstore purchase, ''Obama: The Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll Years.''

And today is ice cream day for the president, so the phone and mail taps are off. Where do you think Belichick got the idea to steal defensive signals?

So here are the Bucs to beat your insensitively named Redskins.

Here comes the real, if not your original ''Over The Hill Gang,'' Bucs quarterback Jeff Garcia and his matching medieval twins, Joey Galloway and Ike Hilliard, to send Joe Gibbs scurrying back to the NASCAR garages.

This game is the season tipping point for both teams. We don't know how the Bucs have been doing what they've been doing, but they'll do it again against the Redskins.

It's old home week. Redskins receiver Keenan McCardell was a key player when the Bucs won the Super Bowl. Doug Williams, now in the Bucs front office, made American history when he quarterbacked the Redskins to a Super Bowl win.

And Bucs general manager Bruce Allen's daddy, the brilliant, quirky George Allen, coached the Redskins to great heights during the 1970s. He had a fan in Richard Nixon, who would send Allen plays. Nixon's favorite was play-action fake to Larry Brown, Billy Kilmer throws deep, Roy Jefferson cuts over the middle and breaks into Democratic national headquarters.

Recent Bucs-Redskins history has been flavorful. The Redskins blew a 13-point second-half lead to lose a playoff game 14-13 to the Bucs in the 1999 season. Two seasons ago, the Bucs won 36-35 on a two-point conversion, a gutsy call by commander in chief Jon Gruden. Never mind that Mike Alstott didn't get in. The Redskins minded, and later beat the Bucs in the playoffs.

So here we stand.

The Redskins step back.

The Bucs move forward.

23-20.

And remember, kiddies, no bounties.

Redskins: Gruden 3:18 Means Another Loss

PAUL WOODY, The Richmond Times-Dispatch

To get into the spirit of the game between the Washington Redskins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, my alarm has been going off each morning at 3:18
a.m.

Not 3:17. Not 3:19. 3:18 a.m.

I bolt upright in bed, ready to go look at some film from the Bucs-Redskins game of 2006 or 2005 or 2004 or 2003. A moment later, my wife says, ''What is wrong with you? (We've been married 32 years and she still has to ask?) Turn off the alarm and go back to sleep.''

I always want to say, ''That's not what Jon Gruden would do.'' But despite what you might have heard, I'm not crazy.

So, I go back to sleep.

Now, you can say, ''Hey, Joe Gibbs sleeps in his office. At least Gruden goes home.''

OK, you have a point. Gibbs, the Redskins head coach, was one of the original sleep-on-the-couch guys. He never hid it.
Never denied it.

His wife even bought him a sleeper sofa. (My wife has ''offered'' to do the same thing for me if the alarm keeps going off at 3:18 a.m.).

Gruden might go home, but what's the point? He gets there in time to sleep, what, three hours and 18 minutes? Then, he's back at One Buccaneer Place.

And about One Buccaneer Place. Let me say how happy I am for everyone in the Buccaneer family that they have a new training facility.

Their home at the other One Buccaneer Place was an early-20th century model. Actually, it was more like late 19th century.

I remember driving to the previous One Buccaneer Place before the Redskins-Bucs playoff game in January 2006.

When I saw that I had to turn onto a service road behind your International Plaza, I thought, ''No, this can't be where an NFL team trains. This can't be where a junior college team trains. This can't be where a high school team trains. This can't be ...'' well you get the idea.

But it was. What a lovely place. Early trailer park. The three parking places were taken, so I parked on the side of the road.

''You can't hide class,'' I thought.

As I walked toward the door, I noticed Gruden was walking in the opposite direction, toward the mall.

I couldn't blame him for that. If I was getting up at 3:18 a.m. to go to work in that place, I would have relocated to the mall
long before January 2006.

Gruden was lost in thought. He probably had all manner of complex offensive sets and plays swirling in his head.

Of course if he did, they were long gone by the time the game was played.

Do you remember that game? Maybe you'd prefer to forget it.

Can't blame you for that.

The Redskins won 17-10. The Redskins had 120 yards in total offense IN THE GAME, the lowest total by a winning team in playoff history. Mark Brunell, now the No. 3 quarterback for the Redskins, passed for 41 yards IN THE GAME.

And the Redskins won. In Tampa.

Man oh man, if I was getting up at 3:18 a.m. and losing playoff games, at home, to teams that had 120 yards in offense IN THE GAME, I would consider sleeping to at least 3:30, maybe even 3:32 or 3:33.

Sunday's game marks the 100th straight time, or something like that, the Redskins have played in Tampa. Coach Gibbs is a bit miffed about that.

Leave it to a coach to complain about a free trip to Tampa in late November. Coaches. You can't live with them, you can't possibly live on the hours they keep.

About this game. The Bucs are favored, as they should be. The Redskins are having one of those seasons where they look like they're just good enough to keep games close, then lose.

Looks are deceiving.

Redskins 17, Bucs 3:18 a., uh, 16.

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