Quiet Strength (25 page)

Ray, however, was worried about security, so we decided that he should talk with the Glazers. They refused to extend my contract but did agree to give one-year extensions to all of my assistants. That was fine with me; I didn’t want to get into another situation like we faced at the 2000 Pro Bowl, when my coaches were out of contract and concerned about their immediate futures.

Lovie Smith and Herm Edwards left the Buccaneers in January of 2001. Lovie was hired to be the defensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams, while Herm became the new head coach of the New York Jets. True to his word, Herm hadn’t left for anything less than a head coaching position, though he had been offered a number of opportunities to become a coordinator over the years. I was sorry to see them both go—we hadn’t made a change on the defensive side of the ball since we had arrived in Tampa in 1996, and now we had to make two.

As I began the interview process, Herm called from the Jets facility on Long Island.

“You should see my office up here, Tony! It’s got a wall of glass that overlooks the practice field. But the best part is, they’re concerned that it’s not big enough! They want to know if I need it expanded! I said no, thanks, and didn’t bother to tell them that it’s twenty times larger than my closet in Tampa, and the door can be shut while I’m still sitting!”

Joel Glazer approached me in the visiting locker room in the Georgia Dome on the final day of August. We were about to play the Falcons in our last preseason game, and Joel and I found ourselves alone.

I figured he wanted to allay my concerns about my future and the rumors that were circulating. I was right.

“Tony, I know you’re hearing rumors that if we don’t win it all this year, we’re going to make a change. I want you to know you don’t have to win the Super Bowl this year. We don’t want to extend your contract now, with two years left, but you’re our coach, and we have confidence in you.”

That was all I needed—to look him in the eye and hear him give me his word.

Lauren wasn’t convinced, however. Something was different, and she could feel it. She always claims that I go through life with rose-colored glasses on, while she is more perceptive. She’s right on both counts. Part of what she had always enjoyed about the Bucs organization was that the Glazers were so personally involved yet so deferential to her opinions. They regularly contacted her to get her thoughts on various issues and had allowed her to set the course for the Buccaneers Wives Organization.

But in 2001, the calls had stopped, and new leaders took over the wives organization. I believed there were other explanations for these things, but Lauren wasn’t so sure. She believed the landscape was changing.

Tom Lamphere, my longtime friend and chaplain from Minneapolis, called me to ask about the rumors he had been hearing about my job security. I was hearing them as well but had chosen not to dwell on them.

“Worrying about my job is not my responsibility; it’s God’s,” I told Tom. “My job is to coach.”

I believed that. Not only did I have Joel’s assurance that there was nothing to those rumors, I also felt that God was using this to test me. Just like when I had mono in 1978, the question was whether I would stay focused on the Lord or start worrying about things I couldn’t control. I knew I needed to stay focused, continue to be the leader of our team, and let the Lord handle the future. Had I grown enough in my Christian faith to do this?

In 2001, Simeon Rice was a free agent. Rod and I took him to dinner when he was visiting Tampa. Simeon had been drafted third overall by the Cardinals in 1996 and had tied the NFL record for sacks by a rookie. He’d been a two-time All-American at the University of Illinois, and he continued with great sack totals in his first five years in the NFL. At an opportune point during dinner, Rod leaned across the table and, with a burning intensity in his eyes, spoke to Simeon.

“Simeon, you’re a talented guy, but you’re not a
great player
. You sack the quarterback and do some good things, but you don’t play with the effort and intensity that it takes to be a winner. That’s why you should come to Tampa. You need
me
to make you a great player.”

Simeon looked at Rod like he was crazy, clearly thinking,
How can you think I’m not a great player?

But Rod had him. Simeon signed with the Buccaneers, and Rod rode him hard through camp and into the season, trying to light a fire within him and get him to play up to his tremendous ability on every play. Rod was known to take Simeon out of games and talk about his intensity, then send him back in after a few plays. Out. Then in. Out again. Then back in. Over and over.

We played a home game against Green Bay in October. It was a typical Tampa day—muggy and hot, around eighty degrees. It was a tough, physical game, and we were fortunate to grind out a win, 14–10, after Brett Favre threw incomplete passes into the end zone on the last two plays of the game. Simeon fell to the turf on his back, exhausted. He, with his teammates, had played with the every-down passion that Rod demanded, so much so that he required IV fluids after the game.

Rod ran out onto the field, exhilarated by the win and the fact that he’d gotten through to Sim after all those weeks. He stood over Sim. “Now you’re starting to understand! This—
this effort
—is what we’ve been talking about!”

Sim looked up and with typical Simeon Rice candor said, “If this is what it takes to win every week, I’m not sure that I want it. It’s not worth it.” Rod’s elation was immediately deflated. Eventually, though, Simeon became a player we knew we could count on.

For the fourth year in a row, we started the season 3–4. We lost to Green Bay on the road but defeated them at home. We swept Detroit but got swept by Chicago. We beat the Rams in St. Louis. It had been a roller-coaster year by the time we battled back to clinch a wildcard playoff spot during the next-to-last week of the season.

Along the way, we split with Minnesota, losing the game in Minneapolis but winning the game in Tampa. In that game we were faced with a situation in which league rules actually seemed to reward unsportsmanlike behavior.

Back then, if teams were tied for a playoff berth, one of the tiebreakers was point differential—which team had beaten its opponents by more points over the course of the season. The point differential wasn’t the first tiebreaker, but it occasionally did come into play. When we played the Vikings in Tampa, we found ourselves inside Minnesota’s five yard line with a 27-point lead and less than two minutes to play. We knelt on the ball four times, just running out the clock rather than trying to score. When we were winning with a big lead, I never liked to rub it in, especially when facing a good friend like Denny Green.

After the game, someone asked me whether I realized that my decision could cost our team a playoff spot if we ended up tied in the standings. “If the Buccaneers miss the playoffs because we refused to embarrass another team,” I said, “then it’s a lousy rule.” Fortunately, that rule was later changed, so coaches no longer have to make that decision.

I hoped, of course, that my decision wouldn’t end up hurting the team, just as I had hoped in 1997 with Michael Husted. But I believed that our principles were more important than worrying about the slight chance of missing the playoffs. I knew that if I was going to emphasize character, then I had to be willing to back it up with actions, even if those actions were difficult. Looking back, I still believe it was the right thing to do.

Although I’ve summarized our regular season in fairly short order, the season was anything but short for those of us who lived it. The NFL season lasts from July to January. It’s a long grind in the best of years. But with the rumors of a coaching change circulating, the 2001 season seemed even longer for many of our coaches and staff and their families.

Lauren was especially sensitive to the changes in the air. Although she had previously been a sounding board for the Glazers, she now heard only silence. In the past, she often came by to spend time with me and our boys, who were in my office every afternoon after school; that year she decided to stay away.

Shortly before the end of the regular season, I had just finished a workout and was drying off in the cramped coaches’ locker room after my shower. A member of our front-office staff was also in the locker room, getting ready for a run.

“Coach, I just wanted to say that I’ve appreciated seeing your witness in light of the circus that is occurring all around,” he said.

I didn’t really have a chance to reflect on my answer before I gave it, but I’m not sure that I could have improved on it much, even now.

“I think there are times when I believe God welcomes the circus into our lives to give us an opportunity to show that there’s another way to live and respond to things.”

Those words are no less true today than they were then.

Questions of faith—for all of us, I suspect—were pushed to the forefront of our lives and national consciousness by the events of September 11, 2001, just two days after we had beaten Dallas in our opening game.

The day before September 11, Jade had joined our family through adoption. When we got her, I had been so excited to think about all we could offer her as a family: love, stability, financial security. But on that Tuesday—the players’ day off and a day we coaches are normally sequestered in a dark film room preparing for our next opponent—everything changed. We usually miss news events, but that day our thoughts of the Eagles stopped as we found ourselves glued to the television screens and wondering what was going to happen. Some of the staff left early. Others of us just stayed together to watch.

Suddenly, I realized how foolish I had been to think I could provide any kind of security for our new baby. As these events unfolded, it became clear to me that only God could do that.

As the day continued, it became obvious that we weren’t going to play that week. In an unprecedented decision, Commissioner Tagliabue postponed all week 2 games, possibly to be rescheduled for a later date.

We were scheduled for a bye the following week, so we would not play again until the last week in September. By the time our bye week came along, the nation’s resolve had become firm, unified, and pointed toward getting back into a normal routine. We did not want this act of terror to have changed our daily lives. I had never before attempted to convince someone that football was terribly important in the overall scheme of life, but as we prepared for the game against Minnesota that week, I told the team that the best thing we could do for our country and to honor those who had died was to continue to do our jobs with excellence in spite of our national adversity. Our country needed a return to some sense of normalcy. We needed to get back to work—for ourselves and our fans. This was like the five o’clock bus ride, an unforeseen obstacle we would have to overcome.

I don’t remember much about that first game after September 11, but I know it wasn’t the game itself I was looking forward to as much as just being out there again and getting back to work. It had been a while since I had given much thought to the significance of singing the national anthem before a game, since it happened so routinely every week. I was usually more interested in who was performing it. But this game, I was focused on the anthem itself—the words, the music, the meaning—as much as the game. I was focused on our team standing out there, ready to go back to work in honor of our country. It was a statement to the world and anyone who would seek to harm us:
You cannot stop us from pressing on.

That was one of the few games in my life that I remember little about what happened or even whether we won or lost. What I do remember is that the Minnesota fans did a great job—as did fans around the country—of supporting us, our nation, and those who had died. We were all unified in our patriotism.

I have always felt that God remains in control, despite the situations we find ourselves in, and I believed He would use the tragic events of September 11 for His glory as well. I never lost faith that God loves us. He sent His Son, Jesus, to make it possible for us to have a full and joyful life here and to make it possible for us to spend eternity with Him in heaven. September 11 made me think about that a lot; compared to eternity, worrying about things like coaching jobs, playoffs, and even the Super Bowl didn’t seem so important.

It was week 18 of the regular season. Usually the NFL season has seventeen weeks—sixteen games plus a bye week—but the commissioner had decided to reschedule those week 2 games for the week immediately following the normal end of the regular season, pushing the playoffs back by a week. Our matchup with Philadelphia, which had been highly anticipated by the fans and media in the preseason thanks to our playoff skirmish the year before, was now virtually meaningless. Both teams had already qualified for the playoffs, and the outcome wouldn’t affect our seeding. Actually, it was beyond meaningless; we were scheduled to play the Eagles in Philadelphia the very next weekend in the first round of the playoffs. Both teams would be careful not to show anything in this game that we might use the next week, when the game actually mattered.

After our staff met, we decided to rest most of our starters and play a very vanilla offense and defense—a preseason game approach. The young guys would get playing time, and the starters would be protected from injury. We turned our attention to practice for the week.

On Thursday afternoon, January 3, I saw Rich walking out to the field. It wasn’t unusual for him to come out and watch, but this time something seemed different. He walked straight toward me. In a very soft voice, Rich delivered the message from my dad: my mom had died.