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Throwdown: Bucs vs. Seahawks

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TBO.com

Published: September 7, 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 feature the Tribune's Martin Fennelly against Danny O'Neil of The Seattle Times. (Who's the winner? Be sure to vote, and to comment below).

Bucs: Let It Rain ...

MARTIN FENNELLY, The Tampa Tribune

You call yourselves a postcard?

Searching our sunny charcoal-grilled horizon this afternoon, with no hint of rain, or volcanic ash, I beheld one of our majestic gypsum stacks rising in the distance - eat your heart out, Mount Rain-ier.

We now turn to the mountain at hand:

Can the Bucs beat the Seahawks?

All of you in Gore-Tex Land are doubtless thinking blowout or, as you say out there, Blowout Grande.

Not so fast.

Yes, the Seahawks are two years removed from the Super Bowl and the Bucs are one year removed from 4-12.

Yes, Seahawks owner Paul Allen could buy and sell the Glazers 20 times over, a positively delightful idea.

The Bucs will win.

Hey, they laughed at Edison's light bulb. They laughed when Lindbergh said he'd cross the Atlantic. They laughed when Sen. Larry Craig's grandfather slipped his foot into Lindbergh's stall at the airport.

We're here to make an Appalachian Statement:

The Bucs will win.

They'll win because aging quarterback Jeff Garcia will turn the fountain of youth into his water-slide park. And if by some chance Lofa Tatupoos on him, Bucs coach Jon Gruden will sign Seattle radio man Warren Moon at halftime.

This is not personal. Seattle and Tampa go way back. We once tried to steal your baseball team, and eventually made off with your baseball manager, Lou Piniella. If we had an NBA team, we'd be trying to steal Kevin Durant. Actually, our hockey team is interested anyway.

The Bucs, as their part of the war effort, hired your former nuisance tight end Jerramy Stevens. Stevens has been a model citizen in Tampa, helping old ladies across the street and showing up at Cub Scout den meetings. And he has stopped trying to acquire WMDs. So there.

The Bucs and Seahawks joined the NFL in 1976. Bucs history is more spectacular in its futility, but they still beat the Seahawks to a conference championship game, a Super Bowl and world championship, pounding the Raiders so badly that people in Oakland couldn't cry about getting robbed by the refs. I mean, what self-respecting city would …

Oh, right.

Bucs 23, Seahawks 20.

Put that in your morning Mocha.

Me? I'm off to my drug test.

Seahawks: Football, Not Futbol

DANNY O'NEIL, The Seattle Times

Pewter? Doesn't that rust? It's not a question so much as a concern about one of your team colors this weekend.

The last time the Buccaneers came up here the Seahawks still played their football indoors so better pack some sleeves this time. Maybe an umbrella, too, because we know all about your franchise and its futility when the thermometer says anything other than balmy. What are the Bucs, 2-22 when the game-time temperature is 40 or lower? How about their record in games played with sideways rain, which Seattle has been known to spit at visitors?

Just kidding. It's supposed to be nice here on Sunday. Really. We're right in the midst of our glorious sunny season. It usually lasts about 10 days. And the bright side of those bright skies for the Bucs will be that they don't get drenched while they're getting demolished.

If you need more advice about the Seahawks' new digs at Qwest Field, ask your new tackle Luke Pettygoo. He played here the past two years with the Giants and only committed a false start or 12. Might want to bring some earplugs for him now that I think about it.

If this was futbol, Tampa might have an edge, but this is football and the fact Malcolm Glazer owns Manchester United won't do any good other than expanding his choice of punters.

As for the Bucs front office, a lot of them sure beat feet up here over the past couple years and this weekend the Bucs will be facing a team assembled by many of the very same guys who put together Tampa's Super Bowl squad. Tim Ruskell. Ruston Webster. John Idzik. Heck, we're even eyeing that pirate ship down there at the stadium in Tampa so our bird has a good place to perch himself during the game.

You have something of ours, too. A tight end we're pretty familiar with, but please excuse us if we didn't recognize Jerramy Stevens that final preseason game this year when he caught seven passes for 100 yards. We're more familiar with Stevens in the setting he found himself this week: a courtroom. Now if he can drop a pass or three at the most crucial time of the biggest game in franchise history maybe you'll get the full taste of what the Jerramy Stevens' experience was like in Seattle.

And then there's the coaches. Mike Holmgren hired Jon Gruden in San Francisco in 1990, naming him as quality-control coach or whatever title the 49ers invented for a gopher that year. Remember that this weekend when the teacher is applying the wood paddle to his old student's team, Seattle 26-9.

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