Brown pins that loss on Gruden’s replacement, Bill Callahan, who allegedly changed the game plan less than 48 hours before the Super Bowl.
“We get our game plan for victory on Monday, and the game plan says we’re gonna run the ball,” Brown said last Saturday on SiriusXM NFL Radio (via Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com). “We averaged 340 (pounds) on the offensive line, they averaged 280 (on the defensive line). We’re all happy with that, everybody is excited. (We) tell Charlie Garner, ‘Look, you’re not gonna get too many carries, but at the end of the day we’re gonna get a victory. Tyrone Wheatley, Zack Crockett, let’s get ready to blow this thing up’.”
At this point, we should mention that the Buccaneers led the NFL in total defense and scoring defense in 2002, allowing just 252.8 yards of total offense and 12.3 points per game. That undersized defensive front yielded 97.1 rushing yards per game, which ranked fifth in the NFL that regular season, and the team was first in passing yards allowed per game and per play. In the postseason, the Buccaneers held the San Francisco 49ers to 228 yards of offense (58 on the ground) and the Philadelphia Eagles to 312 yards of offense, including 72 rushing yards. Oakland gained just 269 yards in Super Bowl XXXVII and only had 19 yards on 11 rushing attempts.
According to ESPN’s Chris Mortensen, former ESPN analyst Jon Ritchie, a fullback on the 2002 Raiders, confirms Brown’s statements that what they practiced during the week was not what was called during the game, a point he has made on television in his years as an analyst. The decision to not run the ball may have also been affected by the late-week disappearance of center Barrett Robbins, a Pro Bowl and All-Pro selection that season who stopped taking medication for his depression. Robbins returned to the team before the game, but was inactive and replaced by Adam Treu, who had played just two snaps on offense during the 2002 season, according to official playing-time documents.