Nick Abramo – Sports Editor Don’t you just love football teams that win with strong defense and a ball-control offense? That kind of game plan is what the Tampa Bay Buccaneers employ, and it’s reminiscent of the 1987 and 1991
Nick Abramo – Sports Editor
Don’t you just love football teams that win with strong defense and a
ball-control offense?
That kind of game plan is what the Tampa Bay
Buccaneers employ, and it’s reminiscent of the 1987 and 1991 Super Bowl
champion New York Giants.
Put an adequate “don’t-make-mistakes” kind of
quarterback in the mix, and you’re very tough to beat.
Spunky rookie
quarterback Shaun King did his best Phil Simms imitation on Monday night in a
win over Minnesota in his first start.
Simms proved you don’t have to be a
superstar talent to become a superstar leader and performer.
If King
continues to show he can lead, the Bucs might go a long way — a very long
way.
The NFC is filled with a lot of mediocre teams this year, and the
vacuum at the top is suctioning the serious contenders towards the
top.
Right now, the St. Louis Rams are at the top of the heap in the NFC,
but they’re winning with offense.
The Bucs and the Detroit Lions are the
hottest items headed upward in the conference, and they meet this Sunday in
what should be a typical “black and blue” division grind-it-out
special.
The game is in Tampa Bay, and the grass and home crowd will suit
the Bucs just fine.
The Vikings are still a team to be reckoned with, but
have now dropped to 7-5 and are in danger of not making the playoffs. The
Vikings are still lacking that key defensive forcefulness.
Speaking of
defense, the Jacksonville Jaguars are just the type of team to get to the
Super Bowl. They’ve limited opponents to just 131 points in 12 games for an
average of 10.9 points per game.
For teams like the Jaguars and Bucs,
Warren Sapp’s comment rings so true:
“A couple of touchdowns (scored) and
we’ll be fine.”
But…Warren…remember to make sure your team makes those
all-important extra points, because the Bucs have given up an average of 13.1
points (158 in 12 games), and if you miss the extra points, you lose.
Which
brings us to the next part of this column.
Jacksonville looks mighty and
experienced enough to beat the top contenders in the AFC — Indianapolis,
Tennessee, Seattle, Miami and Buffalo — to get to the Super Bowl.
The
muddled NFC will become a bit clearer this weekend when Tampa Bay and Detroit
decide which team gets suctioned further up the conference ladder. The winner
can then take aim at those red-hot Rams.
But defense is the name of the
game, and unless Shaun King proves to be a bust, the compass is pointing south
towards the Bucs.
And we may be in store for an all-Florida Super
Bowl:
Jacksonville vs. Tampa Bay.
