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It's Going To Take A While For Brooks' Loss To Sink In

By JOE HENDERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 25, 2009

Do you agree with the Bucs' decision to release Derrick Brooks?

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TAMPA - The bombshell hit around 1 p.m. with a courtesy phone call from Mark Dominik, new general manager for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He wanted to alert us to some moves the team had made. He began running through the names.

Joey Galloway.

Warrick Dunn.

Cato June.

Ike Hilliard.

He paused a moment.

"And Derrick Brooks."

I'm sure I gasped at the news. I'm sure you did too.

We'll talk later today with Dominik and head coach Raheem Morris at a 3 p.m. news conference, but for right now gasping seems to be the only appropriate comment.

But on the surface, this doesn't strike me as the day the previous Bucs regime let John Lynch go when he still had a lot of juice. We'll always speak Brooks' name with reverence, but it's no secret that he had slowed by a step or two the last few seasons. It's almost cruel that the final image we'll have of him is hobbling on a bad hamstring in the final game of the season against Oakland.

He said later he planned to play in 2009, but now it will have to be somewhere else.

Dominik will expand on this later, I'm sure, but for now he said the moves are made strictly so younger guys can get on the field. We've all known this had to happen – many of us advocated it, even as previous coach Jon Gruden was turning the Bucs into AARP South.

Still, we'd like to know what the new regime has in mind from this point forward.

Add to this list the departure of quarterback Jeff Garcia, and in the vacuum of the moment we see a team that will be lucky to win three games. That will be the immediate reaction, anyway. I can't imagine top free agents being wild about joining up with the Bucs for a rebuilding program that might take a while, either.

This may be hard to watch for a while.

The Bucs were on a treadmill, though – no playoff wins since the Super Bowl year, and cranking out seasons that were up and down, down and up. There was no consistency, and we blasted them for being afraid to give the young guys a shot.

Well, they've got their shot now.

The linebackers are wide open. Running back is open. Receivers are open.

We'll have plenty of time to debate it all.

Before we do, though, it needs to sink in that No. 55 won't be there any more. The Bucs should retire Brooks' number this afternoon. If this is the end – I'm sure Brooks will say it isn't – then the countdown to Canton has begun. They should start clearing space in the Hall of Fame for him right now.

And if this is the end for Dunn, it's fitting that he got to end it right where he belongs. He is a class act across the board, and the Tampa Bay community was better for his presence here.

I guess we're just reminded once again that nothing lasts forever, and you can make a football argument that all these moves make sense. The Bucs had to get younger. They had to break from the past. They have to rebuild.

But then you stop and think.

Derrick Brooks just got released.

It just feels weird.

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