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Bucs Take First Step In A Badly Needed Overhaul

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By JOE HENDERSON

jhenderson@tampatrib.com

Published: January 17, 2009

Updated: 01/17/2009 12:44 am

TAMPA - Raheem Morris is one of those guys people want to be around. He is smart, thoughtful, accomplished and energetic, and he is the new head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. You like him the moment you meet him.

Everybody knew he was going to be a head coach in the National Football League someday, so it might as well be here. And that is just what we have.

It was a remarkable sequence of events Friday that began with the firings of Jon Gruden and Bruce Allen, and ended with a rookie head coach in Morris to succeed Gruden and company man Mark Dominik taking over for Allen.

This is more than a typical hiring and firing. It is a seismic shift, a U-turn on a dime for a franchise in disarray. The era of the strong coach is over for the men of pewter. The Bucs began to lose their way shortly after winning the Super Bowl, when Gruden seized power and basically ran former GM Rich McKay out of town. The results have been spectacularly mediocre.

Morris presumably will have no such clout. Only recently was he even promoted to defensive coordinator, and he has never actually handled that assignment in a game. The man's plate figures to be full enough, thank you very much.

Besides, the problems that led to this regime change go way beyond what a coach can correct by himself. As much as Morris may become the face of the franchise, Dominik's promotion may be bigger news.

The Bucs need a GM with patience, a plan, and no infatuation with geriatric quarterbacks. Dominik could be that guy. He is a football lifer with links to the McKay days. He is soft-spoken, loyal, and a survivor with an eye for talent and an undersized ego.

"We have a plan in mind where we want to go with this team," co-chairman Joel Glazer said Friday night. "You've got to look at the totality of the situation."

Totality - that's the key.

Don't Chase Gadgets

Successful organizations row the same direction. They have a certain kind of player they target and they stick to a plan.

Gruden's roving eye never focused on a player he didn't want to chase. I'd imagine that's how they blew a second-round pick last year on Dexter Jackson, a gadget out of Appalachian State who spent most of the season inactive because he seems over his head at this level.

Somebody has to bring back a sense of order. That's the first job for Morris and Dominik.

Bill Cowher would have gotten people excited, but you'd get the "strong coach" thing again. It would be the same with Mike Shanahan, who lost his job at Denver because the Broncos slipped after he got total control.

This season proved you don't need a big name to get big results anyway.

Atlanta, Miami and Baltimore made the playoffs with coaches you couldn't have picked out of a lineup a year ago. And remember when no one knew exactly what McKay was thinking 13 years ago when he hired an obscure defensive coach named Tony Dungy.

As exasperating as the Bucs might have been on his watch at playoff time, it was a franchise fans could be proud of. That hasn't always been the case in the last seven years. We didn't know if this was a team or a halfway house most of the time, because it seemed no one ever said "no" to Gruden's whims.

Lots Of Questions

Morris won't remind you of Dungy, at least not in demeanor. He is much more animated, almost magnetic. Free agents will love this guy.

When he took over the defensive backs two years ago, the improvement in one short season was startling. The word was out on this guy. Denver interviewed him for its head coaching opening, and others would have followed.

It was the same thing with Dominik. He made a strong run at the vacant GM position in Kansas City. He wasn't going to sit anonymously behind Bruce Allen forever.

So the deed is done, the first step in an overhaul that was badly needed.

Just look at the roster now. If Antonio Bryant doesn't re-sign, you've basically got no receivers. You've got aging quarterbacks, an unproven quarterback in Luke McCown, and a we've-got-no-clue QB in Josh Johnson. We have everything except answers.

The defensive line got run over in the final month, and no one can say for sure what the Bucs have at running back. That's a lot to fix.

They didn't get this way because of bad coaching. They got this way because of bad organization. Something had to change. They're still a mess, but at least the mess looks a little better than it did the day before.

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