Upon Further Review: When I’m wrong, I’m way wrong
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Tampa Bay won its first Super Bowl Sunday with a convincing victory over Oakland, and I must say it takes a big man to stand up and say when he is wrong — and I’m sure many of you are waiting to rub my prediction in my face or hear my excuse for Oakland’s big defeat.
Yes, my prediction was way off, but I still think Oakland would beat the Bucs if it were the best two out of three.
The Raiders picked the wrong time to have one of their worse games of the season, and QB Rich Gannon must have been in another world because he sure didn’t have his head in this game. If you take back his interceptions he threw for touchdowns, it’s clear the Raiders would have come out on top.
I know what you’re going to say: The Buccaneers’ defensive line kept pressure on Gannon and never gave him time to throw the ball.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
He had enough time to throw it to the Tampa Bay defenders, didn’t he?
I’ll give the Bucs some credit — they did do a good job of running back the interceptions. The defense scored 21 points for the Bucs and, as bad as I hate to admit it, it was the difference in the game.
Jerry Rice and Tim Brown didn’t show up until the second half and still had little impact on the game. Maybe Rice is getting too old but he says he will be back next year. Rice who was the second-oldest man to play in a Super Bowl, behind former Raider George Blanda, but he played like the oldest man out there with no receptions in the first half.
By the way, for those of you that aren’t old enough to know who Blanda was, he played for Oakland in the 1968 Super Bowl.
Tampa Bay’s coach John Gruden, who built Oakland’s team as their head coach, broke down Oakland quicker than he built them. The $8 million and all those draft picks Tampa traded to Oakland for Gruden seemed a little ridiculous at the time. But now it makes Gruden and the Glazer family look like geniuses.
I said football was over, but for the die-hard NFL fan there is one more game — the Pro Bowl.
Well I have tried to avoid it from the opening paragraph and now its time to admit I was wrong. Tampa Bay deserves to be Super Bowl Champions and next time I will have little doubt in Tampa Bay’s abilities.
I made a mistake and have admitted it. So now maybe everybody in the office will get off my back.
(Just a little footnote, remember Rob picked the Raiders, too.)
• Speaking of mistakes, a pilot for a charter plane, which was returning the Notre Dame basketball team from Providence, R.I. to South Bend, landed at the wrong airport.
The pilot landed at Elkhart, not South Bend. The two airports are just 12 miles apart but this is not a mistake you should be making if you’re a professional pilot.
According to officials, this is the first time the two airports have been confused with each other and the Federal Aviation Administration will be conducting an investigation.
Kind of sounds like Rich Gannon was flying the plane. Landing at the wrong airport and throwing to the wrong team seem fairly similar.